Rediscovering Christianity

2009-02-10T17:42:00.000-08:00

My intent here is not to disprove Christ's existence or to negate his divine essence. My intent here is to rather reveal Christ in a different more applicable light than which has been provided to us by some of the early church fathers. Unfortunately, many biblical scholars today address Christ's unmistakable pagan characteristics primarily as an attempt to disprove his existence. I believe that the realization and acceptance of Christ's non-Judaic nature does not undermine his historic reality nor does it undermine his message. In fact, looking at Christ from a non-Judaic perspective magnifies his universal message and divinity. I simply ask the reader to exercise sound judgment and due diligence when researching this topic. When reading relevant materials on this very sensitive subject, I ask you to take the provided research into consideration - without the anti-Christ bias with which it is sometimes presented. In other words, I am asking you to read between the lines.

Arevordi

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THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES

The icons of this ancient Mediterranean cult can be deciphered only in terms of a worldview that placed the powers controlling human destiny not on the earth but in the stars.

In hundreds of underground temples scattered across the territory of the Roman Empire from England to Syria, modern archaeologists have uncovered paintings and carvings of a young man killing a bull. The significance of this picture, the central icon of a secretive cult known as Mithraism, has been one of the great unsolved archaeological mysteries of this century. What mythical event is depicted by these figures? What clues does the bull slaying yield about the teachings of the cult? I and several other researchers have come to a conclusion that may seem unlikely at first: the image does not represent a myth about events on the earth; instead it is an astronomical code with strong religious implications.

This surprising interpretation gains credibility when considered in light of the widespread religious and social upheavals of the time. Mediterranean civilization in the seven centuries between Alexander the Great and Constantine provided exceptionally fertile soil for the growth of new religions. Alexander's conquests, solidified by his Hellenistic and Roman successors, rapidly created a unified Mediterranean culture out of what had formerly been a diverse collection of individual nations, city-states and tribes. Older forms of religious expression, which had generally been the product of smaller, close-knit societites, were losing their ability to furnish a sense of meaning for individuals adrift in a vastly expanded and increasingly impersonal empire.

As the Hellenistic and Roman empires swallowed up the older city-states and tribes, people came to feel that the powers determining their lives lay out of reach, in the distant parts of the empire. Any philosophy or religion that could offer people a sense of understanding or control exercised a strong attraction. The emergence of Christianity was one response to these conditions. It offered membership in a symbolic community--the "New Israel"-- to people whose actual communities, now submerged in the imperial order, could no longer supply a firm sense of identity. Another response was the rise of fatalism, the idea that life completely controlled by an impersonal fate. Indeed, a personified form of Fate or Chance came to be worshipped as a god in many Hellenistic cults. The name of one Hellenistic philosophy that embraced this fatalistic worldview, Stoicism, survives today, signifying resigned endurance of whatever life may bring.

The general fatalism of the time prepared the way for the success of the more specific fatalism of astrology. Astrology, which first began to gain popular acceptance during the Hellenistic period (the time following the conquests of Alexander), claimed, with a persuasive aura of mathematical accuracy, that all events were pre-determined by powers residing in the stars. The growth of fatalism and astrology in this period makes it plausible that a religion based on the stars should have arisen.

The cult known as the Mithraic mysteries, or Mithraism, was one of the most important--and certainly one of the most intriguing--of the religions that arose at about the same time as Chrstianity. It came into existence in the first century B.C.; Plutarch writes that the Cilician pirates were practicing Mithraic rites by 67 B.C. (The pirates, based in the province of Cilicia in Asia Manor, numbered about 20,000; at their height their operations extended over the entire Mediterranean Sea.) Mithraism reached its peak in the third century and finally succumbed to the expansion of Christianity in the late fourth century, about the time that the Western Roman Empire was falling.

The cult's membership for the most part comprised soldiers, state bureaucrats and merchants; women were excluded. Like a number of other ancient religions (the mysteries of Isis and the Eleusinian mysteries among them), Mithraism limited its membership to those who had passed through a secret initiation ritual. Initiates were forbidden to speak to outsiders about cult secrets, and hence, they were named mysteria, a word whose root means to keep silent. The English word mystery and related words such as mysticism are ultimately derived from the Greek name for the cults. Mithraism was organized around seven distinct grades of initiation, forming a hierarchical structure through which members gradually ascended.

The cult's secrecy meant that no written record of Mithraic doctrines survives. As a result, the only information available to scholars attempting to reconstruct the cult's teachings is the elaborate iconography that decorates the temples. Most of it depicts various activities involving the cult's god, Mithras; the crucial scene is the so-called tauroctony, or bull slaying, in which Mithras, accompanied by various figures, is shown in the act of killing a bull. A tauroctony is found in the most prominent location in virtually every Mithraic temple, and it is clear that this icon holds the key to the central secret of the Mithraic mysteries. In the absence of any written explanation, however, deciphering it has proved a notoriously difficult task.

For most of the 20th century scholarly attempts to explain the tauroctony were dominated by the work of Franz Cumont, the famous Belgian historian of religion. Cumont's interpretation, first presented in 1899, was based on the fact that Mithras is the Greek and Latin name of a much older Iranian god, Mithra. Cumont concluded that Mithraism was imported from the ancient Iranian cult of Mithra, who represented light and truth and was believed to be the special guardian of contracts and agreements. Cumont argued that deciphering the tauroctony was simply a matter of finding parallels to its symbolic elements in ancient Iranian mythology.

Cumont's approach had significant problems. Most important, there is no known Iranian myth in which Mithra has anything to do with killing a bull. Cumont seized instead on an Iranian creation myth in which Ahriman, the embodiment of evil, kills a bull from whose blood and body spring all the living creatures of the earth. He claimed that this myth must have existed in a variant form (for which there is, however, no evidence) in which the good god Mithra replaced the evil Ahriman as the bull slayer. Cumont's eminence was such that his theories remained virtually unchallenged for more than 70 years.

The Iranian connection, and with it Cumont's interpretation of the tauroctony, came under concerted attack at the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies, held at the University of Manchester in 1971. Several scholars, chief among them John Hinnells of Manchester and R.L. Gordon of the University of East Anglia, suggested that Mithraism had in fact been created as a completely new religion somewhere in the Greco-Roman world and that it had merely adopted the name of the Iranian god to give itself an exotic flavor and an aura of antiquity.

If the tauroctony did not represent an Iranian myth, what did it represent? Starting in the mid-1970's, several scholars (including Roger Beck of the University of toronto, Stanley Insler of Yale University, Michael Speidel of the University of Hawaii, Alessandro Bausani of the University of Rome and me) put forward new interpretations of the tauroctony (and of Mithraism) based on the hypothesis that the picture is actually a star map.

Astrological beliefs permeated Mediterranean religious and intellectual life at the time Mithraism originated. In part this was the result of the fatalism of the age. In addition, for individuals cut off from their local traditions and free to move at will anywhere in the empire, astrology filled the need for new symbols that could help make sense of everyday life but were not tied to a particular locality or community, as were the older religious forms. The configurations of the stars appeared the same no matter where in the empire one traveled and so provided ideal raw material for such a universal symbolic system.

The acceptance of astrology led to a growing belief that the dwelling place of the gods was in the realm of the stars. For example, it was during the Hellenistic period that it became the standard practice to call the planets by the names of various Greek gods, such as Zeus (Jupiter) and Ares (Mars). Astrology also encouraged a new conception of life after death, according to which the soul did not go to the underworld, as had earlier been believed, but rather rose through the planetary spheres to the sphere of the fixed stars and then to the paradise that lay beyond the outermost sphere. In time this journey came to be imagined as difficult and dangerous, with secret passwords required to cross each planetary threshold.

Astronomical concepts must have been important in Mithraism, given the frequent appearance of astronomical symbols in Mithraic iconography. The 12 signs of the zodiac and symbols of the sun, moon and planets often appear together with the tauroctony and elsewhere in Mithraic art. The classical author Eubulus, writing during the first or second century, said that the Mithraic temple was meant to be "an image of the cosmos." It now appears that the tauroctony itself was an astral symbol.

In addition to Mithras and the bull, the tauroctony contains a number of other figures: a dog, a snake, a raven, a scorpion and sometimes a lion and a cup. It cannot be coincidence that each has a parallel among the constellations: Canis Minor, Hydra, Corvus, Scorpio, Leo and Crater; the bull is paralleled by Taurus. My work has been directed toward explaining how these constellations could come to form the central icon of a powerful religious movement.

These seven constellations, I have found, are linked in the sky as well as in the tauroctony. With the exception of Leo, they lie along a path defined by an ancient position of the celestial equator. The celestial equator is a projection of the earth's equator onto the celestial sphere. It is an imaginary circle tilted at an angle of 23 degrees to the plane of the earth's orbit (the ecliptic, or the plane that defines the circle of the zodiac). The celestial equator crosses the zodiac at the equinoxes-- the points on the celestial sphere where the sun appears to be on the first day of spring and the first day of autumn.

In antiquity the celestial equator was far more than merely an imaginary circle. Ancient astronomers believed that the earth was located in the center of the universe and was absolutely immovable; the fixed stars were attached to a great sphere that rotated around the earth once a day on an axis running between the sphere's north and south poles. Features of this sphere, such as its poles and equator, played a crucial role in the ancient understanding of the structure of the cosmos. As a result, the celestial equator was much better known in antiquity than it is today; for example, Plato, in his dialogue Timaeus, writes that the creator of the universe began the formation of the cosmos by shaping its substance into the letter X to represent the crossing of the ecliptic and the celestial equator.

For most of antiquity it was believed that the axis of the celestial sphere was, like the earth, immovable. In fact, the earth's rotational axis (the modern equivalent of the ancient cosmic axis) is not fixed; it has a wobbling movement. As it wobbles, the celestial equator wobbles with it, and the relative positions of the equator and the ecliptic change. This so-called precession of the equinoxes means that the position of the sun in the sky at the equinox moves backward along the ecliptic, and so the equinox occurs slightly earlier every year. The complete precession takes approximately 25,920 years; the sun moves through one constellation every 2,160 years. Today the spring equinox is in the constellation of Pisces; in about the year 2200 it will enter Aquarius. During Greco-Roman times the spring equinox was in Aries, which it had entered in about 2000 B.C. Before that it was in Taurus.

With the exception of Leo, all the constellations in the tauroctony lie on the celestial equator as it would have been seen when the spring equinoxwas in Taurus. (Leo marks the sun's location at the summer solstice-- the position of which is also shifted by the precession-- in that era.) The arrangement of constellations in the tauroctony, then, matches an astronomical situation that prevailed 2,000 years before the origins of Mithraism.

How could Mithraists have known of this ancient astronomical arrangement, and why would they have seen it as having religious significance? The precession of the equinoxes was unknown for most of ancient times. It was discovered in about 125 B.C. by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, only a few decades before the initial rise of Mithraism. His careful observations showed the celestial equator was in fact gradually shifting backward through the zodiac. His calculations also made clear which constellations would have lain along the celestial equator when the equinox was in Taurus (its most recent position before the Greco-Roman period).

From the geocentric perspective, the precession (a movement of the earth) appears to be a movement of the entire cosmic sphere. For people who held both a geocentric worldview and the belief that the movements of the stars influenced human fates, the discovery of the precession would have been literally world-shaking: the stable sphere of the fixed stars was being unseated by some force apparently larger than the cosmos itself. Ancient intellectuals, accustomed as they were to seeing the work of the gods reflected in the works of nature, could easily have taken this great movement as evidence for the existence of a powerful, hitherto unsuspected deity.

The meaning of the tauroctony now becomes clear: the death of the bull aptly symbolized the end of the reign of Taurus as the constellation of the spring equinox and the beginning of the most recent era. The other figures in the tauroctony all represent constellations whose special position in the sky was also ended by the force of the precession.

By killing the bull-- causing the precession of the equinoxes-- Mithras was in effect moving the entire universe. A god capable of performing such a tremendous deed would be eminently deserving of worship. Furthermore, the ability to move the cosmos would be seen as endowing Mithras with other powers as well, such as the ability to overcome the forces of fate residing in the stars and to guarantee the soul a safe passage through the planetary spheres after death.

Other Mithraic images indicate that Mithras was in fact believed to embody such cosmic power; there are scenes that show Mithras bearing on his shoulder the sphere of the universe or in which a youthful Mithras holds the cosmic sphere in one hand while with his other he rotates the zodiac. In several tauroctonies, the starry sky is shown contained beneath Mithras's cloak.

The status of Mithras as the motive force behind the precession of the equinox could also explain the secretive nature of the Mithraic mysteries. Adherents could well have believed that their knowledge constituted a powerful secret best kept to themselves and among selected initiates. For those chosen, an understanding of the complex astronomical structure underlying the nature of Mithras would have required a lengthy period of indoctrination. Only after acquiring the requisite knowledge could initiates properly appreciate this new god.

An important question remains: If all the figures in the tauroctony represent constellations, then what constellation does Mithras represent? In the tauroctony, Mithras is located directly above the bull and is always depicted as a young man carrying a dagger and wearing a distinctive conical hat known as a Phrygian cap. The sky directly above Taurus, in fact, contains a constellation typically represented as a young man carrying a dagger and wearing a Phrygian cap: the Greek hero Perseus. Moreover, Perseus was worshipped as a god in Cilicia--precisely the region to which Plutarch traces the origins of Mithraism.

Tarsus, the capital city of Cilicia, was the home of one of the most important intellectual communities in the Mediterranean. This community was dominated by Stoic philosophers who were famous not only for their fatalism (which led them to be firm believers in astrology) but also for their tradition of personifying natural forces in the form of gods and heroes. Most likely, Mithraism arose as intellectuals in Tarsus, speculating about the force responsible for the newly discovered precession of the equinoxes, personified that power in the local Cilician god Perseus. Perseus, after all, was already identified as a constellation, and the message of his position in the sky was clear to read.

But if Mithras was originally in some sense Perseus, how did his name come to be Mithras? First, of course, it would make sense for a mystery religion to conceal the true name of its deity. Second, because of the sound of his name, Perseus was believed in antiquity to have been the founder of Persia (Iran) and thus could easily have become linked mythologically with the Iranian god of light and truth, Mithra. Third, around the time of the origins of Mithraism, most of Asia Minor came under the control of King Mithridates of Pontus, who formed a strong alliance with the Cilician pirates. Mithridates belonged to a dynasty named after Mithra; in addition, he and his ancestors believed that they were descended from Perseus. It was probably in the circles around King Mithridates-- who fancied himself an intellectual and took a special interest in Greek religious beliefs-- that the link was formed between Perseus and Mithra that eventually led to the adoption of the name Mithras (the Greek form of the name Mithra).

Today Christianity is one of the world's dominant religions; Mithraism (along with any number of other cults) died out. Why? One crucial difference between the two is that from its beginning Christianity sought to make as many converts as possible. The author of the gospel of Matthew, for example, ends by having Jesus say, "Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations." Mithraism, in contrast, was based on a secret, and secrets lose their appeal in direct proportion to the numbers of people who know them.

In addition, Mithraism took hold mostly among groups of people-- soldiers, bureaucrats, merchants-- who were intimately bound up with the existing social order of the empire, and the cult's hierarchical structure fitted that order in a way that early Christianity, with its apocalyptic doctrine of the return of the messiah and disregard of earthly matters, did not. Early Christians (who were typically people whose social status was problematic in one way or another) possessed a revolutionary zeal that was completely absent in Mithraism.

While early Christians sought to enlighten the world, then, adherents of the Mithraic mysteries sought individual enlightenment and advancement within the existing culture. As a result, Mithraists had no hesitation in adopting practices that would necessarily limit the size of the cult's membership, such as excluding women from the cult, constructing temples as small underground cavities and establishing a complex series of initiation rites.

The heart of the matter, then, is not so much why Mithraism did not grow as Christianity did but rather how Christianity achieved the spectacular success that it sought: by the end of the fourth century it had led to the almost total elimination of competing religions in the Mediterranean world.

The precise reasons for Christianity's success are, of course, a matter of intense scholarly debate. There is a general consensus, however, that one of the most important factors was exclusivity. Becoming a Christian required that a convert give up all other forms of religious worship. Other religions of the times demanded no such single-mindedness: one could be an initiate of Mithras as well as of Isis, participate in sacrifices to Jupiter and at the same time venerate the spirit of a dead emperor. In a time when many people were experiencing the collapse of their traditional sources of meaning, the radical exlusivity of Christianity exercised a powerful appeal: it gave prospective converts the opportunity to make a truly decisive choice; those who did convert could believe that their lives had gained a real purpose and significance. In an age of confusion, Christianity offered its adherents a clear sense of identity.

It is particularly interesting to note that Christianity appealed to some of the same astral-religious conceptions that lay behind Mithraism and other cults. Jesus was frequently described as having a power over the world of the stars. The author of the gospel of Mark (the earliest of the Christian gospels), for example, begins his story by describing how Jesus, at the moment of his baptism, "saw the heavens torn open." Through this image the author seems to have been attempting to convey the idea that the life of Jesus constituted a rupture of the cosmic order, the expression of a power greater than that of the heavens.

The same author also presents Jesus as saying, "In those days... the stars will fall from the sky.... Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." Paul's letter to the Galatians reads in part: "When we were children, we were enslaved to the elemental forces of the cosmos, but when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son.. .to free [us]." Just as Mithras, by shifting the celestial sphere, upset the order of the universe, so the coming of Jesus was believed to have produced a rupture in the fabric of the cosmos.

Not only early Christianity and Mithraism but also many other religions and philosophical movements of that period expressed this same yearning for identification with a force that could break the boundaries of the cosmos and provide access to realms outside the limits of ordinary experience. Such a yearning was spurred by the upheavals of the time: as the local foundations of culture were undermined, individual horizons could expand. At the same time, scientists' imaginations suddenly stretched out to encompass a grand vision of the celestial spheres. Today's world, with its increasingly global culture and a science that in a single generation has leaped past the farthest galaxies, shows striking parallels with that ancient Mediterranean age.

Source: http://www.well.com/user/davidu/sciam.html

MITHRAS = CHRISTIANITY?

This religion, cloaked in mystery and secrecy, has captivated the imaginations of scholars for generations. Many facts discovered sheds vital light on the cultural dynamics that led to the rise of Christianity. The National Geographic Society’s book “Great Religions of the World,” page 309 writes; “By Jesus’ time, East and West had mingled here for three centuries. Down columns of boulevards walked Roman soldiers loyal to the Persian god Mithras.” Mithras was a Persian deity. He was also the most widely venerated god in the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus. The Catholic Encyclopedia as well as the early Church Fathers found this religion of Mithras very disturbing, as there are so many similarities between the two religions, as follows:

1) Hundreds of years before Jesus, according to the Mithraic religion, three Wise Men of Persia came to visit the baby savior-god Mithra, bring him gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense.

2) Mithra was born on December 25 as told in the “Great Religions of the World”, page 330; “…it was the winter solstice celebrated by ancients as the birthday of Mithraism’s sun god”.c

3) According to Mithraism, before Mithra died on a cross, he celebrated a “Last Supper with his twelve disciples, who represented the twelve signs of the zodiac.

4) After the death of Mithra, his body was laid to rest in a rock tomb.

5) Mithra had a celibate priesthood.

6) Mithra ascended into heaven during the spring (Passover) equinox (the time when the sun crosses the equator making night and day of equal length).

As you can now see, Christianity derived many of its essential elements from the ancient religion of Mithraism. Mithraism became intertwined with the cult of Jesus to form what is known today as “Christianity.” Although literary sources on this religion are sparse, an abundance of material evidence exists in the many Mithraic temples and artifacts that archaeologists have found scattered throughout the Roman Empire, from England in the north and west to Palestine in the south and east. The temples were usually built underground in caves, which are filled with an extremely elaborate iconography (illustrating by pictures, figures and images). There were many hundreds of Mithraic temples in the Roman Empire, the greatest concentrations have been found in the city of Rome itself.

We often hear about how many of the traditions, rites and symbols of modern day "Christian" holidays have their roots in paganism. Have you ever wondered why December 25th was chosen to celebrate the birth of Jesus? Could it only be a consequence that ancient paganism and the story of Mithras' birth coincides with the Yule/Christmas season? If the accounts in the Bible are correct, the time of Jesus birth would have been closer to mid-summer, for this is when shepherds would have been "tending their flocks in the field " and the new lambs were born. Strange enough, the ancient pagan religion, Mithraism, which dates back over 4,000 years, also celebrated the birth of their "saviour" on December 25th. Franz Cumont, who is consider by many to be the leading research authority on Roman Paganism, explained the ancient religion called Mithraism.

Then Mithras returned to the earth to teach humanity His commandments and begin Mysteries and Rites which would help humans remember His acts on our behalf. Because of His actions, we can choose good without the overwhelming power of evil, even though evil's influence can still seem powerful because our minds believe it is. Because of His teachings, we know that the purpose of our lives is to serve others in the name of Mithras. The followers refer to Him as the "Light of the World" a phrase often used also in Christian faith when referring to Jesus. This son of a god born of a virgin, was so commonly spread in those days that Philo of Alexandria (30 BCE - 45 CE), warned against this widespread superstitious belief in unions between male gods and human females. The offspring’s are known as demigods.

Tammuz, who was incorporated also into Attis and Mithras, and they stood model for the story in the NT, because they were deities who all are supposed to have died and resurrected. Tammuz was always called Adon, meaning Lord. (the Greek Adonis, was based on him). Actually all these deities were based on the first deity to have died and resurrected, the Egyptian deity Osiris. So there is absolutely nothing unique about Jesus. In fact he is copyright due to Osiris.

Of the following (semi) deities legends went around that they were born of a virgin:

Augustus (his father was the god Apollo) Agdistis Attis
Adonis Buddha Dionysus
Korybas Krishna Mithras
Osirus Perseus Romulus and Remus
Tammuz Zoroaster Jesus

So basically, all the pagan religions were alike, including Christianity. It just happens that one of them got the ascendancy, and became the most powerful, and did its best to wipe out all the others. In addition to a lack of historical support, many characteristics of Jesus, which Christians today believe in, are undeniably similar or identical to religious trends and beliefs that preceded Christianity. There are tens of accounts of pagan gods of many different cultures who were said to have the same attributes as those that Christians claim Jesus had. A brief review of some of these may lead to some interesting questions concerning the originality of the Christian claim:

ATTIS - Phrygia: Born of the virgin Nana on December 25. He was both the Father and the Divine Son. He was a savior crucified on a tree for the salvation of mankind. He was buried but on the third day the priests found the tomb empty -- He had arisen from the dead (on March 25th). He followers were baptized in blood, thereby washing away their sins -- after which they declared themselves "born again." His followers ate a sacred meal of bread, which they believed became the body of the savoir.

BUDDIAH – INDIA: Born of the Virgin Maya on December 25th. He was announced by a star and attended by wise men presenting costly gifts. At birth angles sing heavenly songs. He taught in temple at age 12. Tempted by Mara, the Evil One (Satan), while fasting. He was baptized in water with the Spirit of God present. Buddiah healed the sick and fed 500 from a small basket of cakes and even walked on water. He came to fulfill the law and preached the establishment of a kingdom of righteousness and obliged followers to poverty and to renounce the world. He transfigured on a mount. Died (on a cross, in some traditions), buried but arose again after tomb opened by supernatural powers. Ascended into heaven (Nirvana). Will return in later days to judge the dead. Buddiah was called: "Good Shepherd," "Carpenter," "Alpha and Omega," "Sin Bearer," "Master," "Light of the World," "Redeemer," etc.

DIONYSUS - GREECE: Born of a Virgin on December 25th, placed in a manger. He was a traveling teacher who performed many miracles. Turned water into wine. Followers ate sacred meal that became the body of the god. He rose from the dead March 25th. Identified with the ram and lamb's and was called "King of Kings," "Only Begotten Son," "Savior," "Redeemer," "Sin bearer," "Anointed One," the "Alpha and Omega."

HERACLES – GREECE: Born at the winter equinox of a virgin who refrained from sex with her until her god-begotten child was born and was sacrificed at the spring equinox. He too, was called "Savior," "Only begotten," "Prince of Peace," "Son of Righteousness."

KRISHNA - INDIA: Krishna was born while his foster-father Nanda was in the city to pay his tax to the king. His nativity heralded by a star, Krishna was born of the virgin Devaki in a cave, which at the time of his birth was miraculously illuminated. The cow-herds adored his birth. King Kansa sought the life of the Indian Christ by ordering the massacre of all male children born during the same night at He. Krishna traveled widely, performing miracles -- raising the dead, healing lepers, the deaf and the blind. The crucified Krishna is pictured on the cross with arms extended. Pierced by an arrow while hanging on the cross, Krishna died, but descended into Hell from which He rose again on the third day and ascended into Heaven. (The Gospel of Nicodemus tell of Jesus' descent into Hell.) He will return on the last day to judge the quick and the dead. Krishna is the second person of the Hindu trinity.

OSIRIS – EGYPT: He came to fulfill the law. Called "KRST," the "Anointed One." Born of the virgin Isis-Meri on December 25th in a cave / manger, with his birth announced by a star and attended by three wise men. Earthly father named "Seb" (translates to "Joseph.") At age 12 he was a child teacher in the Temple and at 30 he was baptized, having disappeared for 18 years. Osiris was baptized in the river Iarutana -- the river Jordan -- by "Anup the Baptizer," who was beheaded. (Anup translates to John.) He performed miracles, exorcised demons, raised El-Osiris from the dead. Walked on water and was betrayed by Typhon, crucified between two thieves on the 17th day of the month of Athyr. Buried in a tomb from which he arose on the third day (19th Athyr) and was resurrected. His suffering, death, and resurrection celebrated each year by His disciples on the Vernal Equinox -- Easter. Called "The Way, the Truth, the Light," "Messiah," "god's Anointed Son,' the "Son of Man," the "Word made Flesh," the "word of truth." Expected to reign a thousand years.

NOTE 1: Persian legends of Mithras says that He was born of the Sun God and a virgin mother, called "the Mother of God", on December 25th. They saw him as a symbol of justice, truth, and loyalty. He was considered the saviour of humankind, and stories abound of His healing the sick, raising the dead, and performing miracles (making the blind see and the lame walk). Throughout His lifetime, He was seen as a protector of human souls, a mediator between "heaven" and "earth" and was even associated with a "holy trinity". He remained celibate, until the ripe old age of 64, throughout his life and preached the virtues of ethics, moral behavior, and good will. Does this sound familiar? Sure sounds like Jesus.

NOTE 2: Ancient Persians believed in a "celestial heaven" and hell. They believed that they would be judged by their god and granted justice of" eternal salvation. On judgement day, the faithful dead would be resurrected and light would triumph over darkness.

NOTE 3: They took part in ritual purification or baptism, held Sundays sacred, drank wine and ate bread as a symbol of the body and blood and even took part in ritualistic purging (purification rites such as flagellation).

NOTE 4: In their legends, Mithras had an "earthly mission' to accomplish. He then was put to death on a cross and buried in a cave (some legends have Him held in a cave to be reborn once a year).

NOTE 5: He then "rose from the dead" and took part in a last supper with his 12 disciples (often associated with the 12 signs of the zodiac) and then ascended to the heavens to watch over His "flock" from above.

As a footnote to all this: The World Book Encyclopedia tells that Mithras was an angel of light who fought on the side against the forces of evil. In the Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia Mithras was called “the Heavenly Light.” This belief carried to Assyria and Asia Minor where many people identified him with the sun. Mithraism came into the ancient Roman world about 75 BCE., and ranked as a principal competitor of Christianity for 200 years. In addition to a lack of historical support, many characteristics of Jesus, which Christians today believe in, are undeniably similar or identical to religious trends and beliefs that preceded Christianity. There are tens of accounts of pagan gods of many different cultures who were said to have the same attributes as those that Christians claim Jesus had.

Trinity― Trinities were popular in pagan sects before Christianity was introduced to the world. Some of the more well known trinity gods included Mithra-Vohu Mana-Rashnu, Amen-Mut-Khonsu, and Osiris-Isis-Horus. Virgin Birth―Among the pagan cultures that preceded Christianity, virgin birth stories abounded. The long list of pagan gods born of virgins includes: Romulus and Remus, Zoroaster, Buddha, Mithras, Chrishna, Osiris-Aion, Agdistis, Attis, Tammuz, Adonis, Korybas, Perseus, and Dionysus.

Disciples― In the following 'saviors' cases, a grouping of disciples was present, just as they were present in Jesus' story: Horus, Buddha, Chrishna, Dionysus, Mithra. Interestingly enough, in the case of Dionysus, his disciple Acoetes was a boatman, just as Jesus' disciple Peter. And just as Peter was freed from jail when the doors miraculously flew open, so was Dionysus' disciple Acoetes. In Budda's case, he, like Jesus, demanded that his disciples renounce all worldly possessions. Yet another instance of similarity is that the disciples of both Jesus and Buddha were said to have been arrested for preaching, as well as witnessed to have "walked on water."

Miracles― Among those 'saviors' who, like Jesus, performed countless miracles include: Horus, Chrishna, Buddha, Dionysus, Mithra, Osirus, and Adonis. Horus was said to have walked on water, just as Jesus did. In addition, Horus raised one man, El-Azarus, from the dead in front of countless witnesses. In the case of Buddha, it was told that he fed five hundred men with one loaf of bread, that he cured lepers, and that he caused the blind to see. Dionysus rescued a person from dying when the person was utterly desolate and placed them among the stars. And he gave food and drink, herbs and berries, to the starving people -- not to mention turning water into wine.

The Sun― Here is another common theory, quoted from S. Acharya's "The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus:" "The reason why all these pagan narratives are so similar to a "god-man" is that these stories were based on the movements of the sun through the heavens, an astrotheological development that can be found throughout the planet because the sun and the 12 zodiac signs can be observed around the globe.

Source: http://jdstone.org/cr/files/mithraschristianity.html

2009-02-10T17:35:00.000-08:00

Acclaimed to be the favorite student of Christ, the apostle Thomas is also said to be the very author of the gospel associated with his name. However, the work produced by Thomas has proven to be somewhat of a taboo within traditional Christian churches. Biblical scholars claim that the Gospel of Thomas is the work of Thomas himself, unlike the other gospels who's original authors are in dispute. Despite the aforementioned fact about Thomas, however, the church forefathers abandoned Thomas' writings from the early years of the founding of the Christian church.

I suspect this was done because the Christ as described by Thomas did not fit the nature/character of the Christ that was being formulated by the early church fathers. Thomas' gospel is unique in that the author, who is said to be the favorite student of Christ, has recorded various sayings of Christ and does not attempt to get into the biography or story of Christ. Thomas' gospel is unique also for the fact that the work in question is clearly on a higher spiritual level, it is in a sense an esoteric work. The work differs fundamentally from the other gospels, perhaps with the exception of Gospel of John. Thomas' work feels quite odd when viewed from an traditional/orthodox Christian perspective. Modern readers would immediately recognize a New Age character of the wordage used and the imagery painted by Thomas, as well as unmistakable eastern influences. Thomas depicts Christ in abstract extraterrestrial terms.

Relevant questions pertaining to Thomas: Why have the church fathers for centuries neglected his work, especially considering the fact that the work in question is considered to be the authentic work of Christ's favorite student? Why was the Gospel of Thomas not included within the New Testament? Does Thomas' work undermine the theological formula concerning Christ? Does it belittle Christ's essence?

The answer is, no. Christ comes through as a divine being, albeit a bit unusual and esoteric. The only problem I sense is that the Christ, as described in the Gospel of Thomas, did not fit the image of the Christ that was being formulated by early church fathers, more specifically those associated with the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. Nonetheless, in order to better understand the real essence of Christ and Christianity I believe that Thomas' gospel has to be reexamined by Christ's faithful.

Arevordi

*********************************

GOSPEL OF THOMAS: THE BUDDHIST JESUS?

Lost for 1,600 years

In 1945, in an Egyptian cave near desert town of Nag Hammadi, 52 papyrus texts were discovered, some dating from the beginning of the Christian era, revealing a Jesus who teaching akin to a Shin myokonin, a Zen Master, or even Shakyamuni Buddha himself. Lost for 1,600 years, these are known as the Gnostic Gospels, from the Greek word "gnosis"...meaning "to know"...’to know oneself,” that is to have an insight into and awakened to oneself in an intuitive and non-dualistic sense.

Buddhist Influences

According to the New Testament (The Gospel of Matthew), Jesus spent his early childhood in Egypt which was at the end of the Silk Road. As a result, Egypt was prosperous and enriched with religious diversity. There was even a large Buddhist community known as the Therapeutae (Sons of the Elders) that existed in Alexandria. Today, some scholars believe that Jesus may have been inspired by the Buddhist religion and that the Gospel of Thomas and many Nag Hammadi texts reflect this possible influence. Books such as The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels and The Original Jesus by Gruber and Kersten examine the facts and fiction, and theories.

This is not to say that Jesus was a Buddhist disciple but just possibly he had been influenced by the Buddhist teachings. This is mere speculation. Obviously, he was a xxx and was influenced by the Hebrew religious tradition. However, for us, Jesus is our spiritual brother and our teacher as a mystic. We are one with all mystics whether they be called Shinran, Dogen, Rumi, Khan, Gandhi, Jesus, Nanak and Ramana, etc. Each mystical tradition speaks of the same experience but with different words; one may use the word "Pure Land" and the other as the "Kingdom of Heaven" but the experience is the same.

A Different Christian Tradition

Some scholars have observed that among these Nag Hammadi texts, The Gospel of Thomas includes teachings older than Gospels of the New Testament, such as Mark, Matthew, Luke or John, and also closer to the actual life of the historical Jesus. These scholars believe that the Gospel of Thomas was written around 62 C.E. because it commends James, the brother of Jesus, to be the legitimate heir to the early Christian movement and in addition makes no reference to the Roman sack of Jerusalem in 72 C.E. Moreover, of all of the Nag Hammadi texts, it is Thomas that has the most similarities with Pure Land Buddhism within it.

Enlightenment for All

Exploring the Gospel of Thomas, we discover that Jesus believed the self and the divine to be identical and one. Furthermore, the Kingdom of Heaven is not in the future but is “right here.” and one only needs to be awakened to this perfection. Jesus, in this gospel, speaks of enlightenment, the same type that is taught by Shakyamuni Buddha, Shin teachers and Zen Masters. In addition, Thomas does not have a narrative story line but just 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, many of which are akin to Zen koans. Here, Jesus is never presented as Lord or Savior, but rather as a spiritual guide who is equal to his students. In addition, the Gospel of Thomas does not contain a supernatural virgin birth or the doctrine of the Virgin Mary. It does not teach of original sin. It does not mention Jesus’ crucifixion or resurrection. It does not teach Jesus’ death as a payment of debt to “atone” for humanity's sins. It does not include any supernatural healings or miracles. It does not mention the so-called end-times or the wrath of God. It does not mention salvation through faith in Christ. It does not exclude women.

The Exclusion of Thomas

Why was the Gospel of Thomas disqualified from the Christian Bible and eventually outlawed? During the reign of Emperor Constantine around the 4th century C.E., the Roman Empire was looking to reconstitute and solidify its power. The Emperor and the existing power structure chose the Pauline sect of Christianity as the “official” religion, which include the epistles of Paul and the Gospels and books from his disciples that form the present-day New Testament. Teachings from the Gospel of Thomas and other Nag Hammadi texts were seen as a danger to the developing ecclesiastical and political structure because they rejected the authority of the bishops, priests and deacons. Roman Church father Ignatius warned the Christians to "honor and obey the bishop as you would God." It is quite easy to see why the church councils did not choose the Gospel of Thomas and other similar texts for their Bible. As a result, for political reasons these texts were banned and later destroyed for the good of Empire and Church. After all, bishops and priests would lose their power and influence with the common people, if the common people learned that Jesus taught they did not need such religious authority/intermediaries of the Church, bishops and priests, and that the Kingdom is within all and is directly accessible to everyone without them; we all are sons/daughters of God.

Why Study the Gospel of Thomas?

You might be wondering why Shin Buddhists should even bother to study the early teachings of Jesus? Our interest in learning about the early teachings of Jesus is not to discredit Christianity but because this Gospel shares similar mystical content with the Shin and Zen Buddhist traditions, we 21st century Buddhists can learn a lot from this ancient mystic, called Jesus of Nazareth. So, by studying the teachings of the Gospel of Thomas through the lenses of Buddhist thought and religious experience, we can further deepen our spiritual path and awaken to our True Nature, our universal Buddha-nature, which ultimately has no name but is experienced as faith, compassion and wisdom.

In addition, as Western Buddhists, we must deal with Christianity as a political, social and religious power. How shall we perceive the teachings of Jesus? Must we cave into the dogma of the traditional and evangelical Christian parlance? Or can we reinterpret the teachings (dharma) of Jesus? Must Jesus be an advesary or can he be a teacher for us? Just with a shift in interpretation, Jesus becomes not a judgemental and cosmic Christ but a Bodhisattva guiding beings like ourselves to the Kingdom that is there before us and within us. Perhaps in the future, due to its Buddhist inclinations, the Gospel of Thomas will be considered a genuine Buddhist sutra (scripture) thereby bridging the gap between Eastern and Western spirituality while helping seekers to awaken to the endowed Pure Land (Kingdom of God) within themselves. Maybe, even Jesus himself will someday be considered the Bodhisattva of the West.

Parallel Sayings and Teachings

The following web pages offer an open-minded presentation of some of the parallel mystical sayings and teachings from the Gospel of Thomas that may be related to but are certainly illuminated by the Buddhist teachings. This is a work in progress and in the near future more correlations will be added, including the parallel sayings from the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Mary, the Q Gospel and other Nag Hammadi texts. Regarding the Gospel of Thomas with Shin and Zen Buddhist teachings, some of the similiarities are disturbing. But did not Jesus say, "the seeker should not stop until he finds. When he does find, he will be disturbed. After being disturbed, he will be astonished" (Thomas 2). Please read on and judge for yourself.

Source: http://buddhistfaith.tripod.com/gospel/

Gospel of Thomas

1) And he said, "Whoever finds the inner meaning of these words will not taste death."

2) Jesus said, "Let him who seeks not cease seeking until he finds, and when he finds, he will be troubled. When he has been troubled, he will marvel, and he will reign over the All."

3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say, 'See, the Kingdom is in heaven,' then the birds of the heaven will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is within you and it is without you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

4) Jesus said, "The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child of seven days about the place of Life, and he will live. For many who are first shall become last, and they shall become a single one."

5) Jesus said, "Know what is in the presence of your face, and what is hidden from you will be revealed to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest."

6) His disciples questioned him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How shall we pray? Shall we give alms? What diet shall we observe?" Jesus said, "Do not lie, and do not do what you hate, for all things are exposed in the presence of the sky. There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing covered that will remain undiscovered."

7) Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which the man consumes and the lion becomes man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man."

8) And he said, "The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of small fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a fine large and good fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without trouble. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear."

9) Jesus said, "Now the sower went out, filled his hand with seeds, and cast. Some fell on the road; the birds came and gathered them up. Others fell on the rock, did not send roots down to the earth, and did not send ears rising to the sky. And others fell on thorns; they choked the seed and the worm ate them. And others fell on good earth and produced good fruit: it bore sixty per measure and a hundred and twenty per measure."

10) Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and behold, I watch over it until it is ablaze."

11) Jesus said, "This sky shall pass away, and the one above it shall pass away. The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. In the days when you consumed what is dead, you made it alive. When you come into the light, what will you do? On the day you were one you made two, but having become two, what will you do?"

12) The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you will depart from us. Who is to be our rabbi?" Jesus said to them, "Wherever you are, you are to go to James the righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."

13) Jesus said to his disciples, "Make a comparison to me and tell me whom I resemble." Simon Peter said to Him, "You are like a righteous angel." Matthew said to Him, "You are like a wise philosopher." Thomas said to Him, "Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like." Jesus said, "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated by the bubbling spring which I have measured out." And he took him and withdrew and spoke to him three words. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?" Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the words he has spoken to me, you will take stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you."

14) Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will give rise to sin for yourselves; and if you pray, they will condemn you; and if you give alms, you will do harm to your spirits. When you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what they set before you, and heal the sick among them. For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but that which issues from your mouth - it is that which will defile you."

15) Jesus said, "When you see one who was not born of woman, prostrate yourselves on your faces and worship him. That one is your Father."

[...]

Source: http://www.sophian.org/Gospel%20of%20Thomas.htm

2009-02-10T17:33:00.000-08:00

Parallel Sayings of Buddha and Christ

Although the Buddha and Jesus lived hundreds of years and cultures apart, there are striking parallels to the sayings attributed to them. It is not that they said exactly the same things, it is rather that their distinctive and independent sayings pierce the veil of illusion, reminding us that God, or truth or whatever word that we choose to call that which is ultimate, binds us together in a timeless and infinite garment of mutuality. The parallel teachings of Buddha and Christ are from the book Jesus and Buddha, the Parallel Teachings by Marcus Borg, Jesus scholar and Buddhist writer, Jack Kornfield. The Buddha sayings are taken from the Dhammapada and the sutras of the Buddha. The Jesus sayings are taken from the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Buddha: They agreed among themselves, friends, here comes the recluse, Gotama, who lives luxuriously, who gives up his striving and reverted to luxury.

Jesus: The son of humanity came eating and drinking and they said look a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.

Buddha: With the relinquishing of all thought and egotism, the enlightened one is liberated through not clinging.

Jesus: Those who want to save their life will loose it. Those who loose their live for my sake will save it.

Buddha: One is the way to gain, the other is the way to Nirvana, knowing this fact, students of the Buddha should not take pleasure in being honored, but, should practice detachment.

Jesus: No slave can serve two masters For a slave will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

Buddha: Just as a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her own life, even so, cultivate a boundless heart towards all beings. Let your thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world.

Jesus: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.

Buddha: If you do not tend to one another then who is there to tend to you? Whoever who would tend me, he should tend the sick.

Jesus: Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, so you have done it unto me.

Buddha: Consider others as yourself.

Jesus: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Buddha: One who acts on truth is happy, in this world and beyond.

Jesus: You will know the truth and the truth will make you free.

Buddha: Hatred do not ever cease in this world by hating, but by love; this is an eternal truth... Overcome anger by love, Overcome evil by good. overcome the miser by giving, overcome the liar by truth.

Jesus: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. From anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.

Source: http://www.heartlandsangha.org/parallel-sayings.html

Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings

Revered as two of the greatest spiritual figures in the history of man, Jesus Christ and Buddha forged and articulated the precepts that would form the ideological foundations of the Christian and Buddhist religions. From what were austere beginnings, these visionary doctrines evolved over time into universal forces in their own right. Only a handful of other belief systems have influenced the lives of so vast a number of people throughout the world to the extent that these two great religions have.

In appreciating what Christianity and Buddhism stand for in the eyes of their followers, it is important to understand the doctrinal association that exists between the two faiths. Although Western scholarship has acknowledged the similarities that link some of the teachings and beliefs of Christianity with those of the two other monotheistic religions, Islam and Judaism, it has subordinated the notion of a fundamental relationship between those teachings and beliefs with their counterparts in Buddhism. Guilty perhaps, of what could be called shallow historiography or deliberate obscurantism, scholars in the West have channeled the gist of their attention and assent on the divisions that separate Buddhism and Christianity.

The book Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings however, runs against that scholarly tendency as it de-emphasizes the distinctions between Christianity and Buddhism and discerns a remarkable similitude in their teachings. Whereas previous scholarship attempted to minimize the amount of discourse on the subject, a meaningful correlation between the two religions is the essential proposition being tendered in Jesus and Buddha. Buddhist writer Jack Kornfield eloquently sums up this correspondence when he writes about the efficacy of Jesus’s and Buddha’s teachings in the book’s introduction: "When we listen deeply to their words, we find that in many ways, they speak with one heart."

Jesus and Buddha’s co-editor, Jesus scholar Marcus Borg, partitions the book—the main body of which is comprised of some of Jesus’s and Buddha’s most famous sayings—into twelve categories that conform with where the two prophets’ teachings appear to closely intersect. Borg maintains that the spiritual kinship shared between both men took shape before either one of them were even conceived to the world. In the Digha Nikaya (Collection of Long Discourses), one of the renowned texts of the Buddhist canon, some devas urge Queen Maya, after she had given birth to the infant Buddha, to celebrate for "a mighty son has been born to you." Along similar lines in the Gospel of Luke, the Angel Gabriel reveals to the Virgin Mary that she will give birth to the one "who will be called the Son of the Most High."

One of the categories in Jesus and Buddha is entitled "Materialism." We are reminded here of both men’s unwavering antipathy towards the material world. Gnostic in tone, the Buddha preached that an individual’s insatiable appetite for material wealth and physical pleasure must be purged before he or she can live a life of virtue, and therefore embark upon the path to nirvana. Buddha also says in the Jatakamala that "Riches make most people greedy, and so are like caravans lurching down the road to perdition." In an excerpt from the Udanavarga, Buddha cautions us to bear in mind that death is the great levelling force of the cosmos, as he declares that even "though one accumulates hundreds of thousands of worldly goods, one still succumbs to the spell of death."

Jesus’s sayings on materialism are certainly identical in spirit, if not in composition, with Buddha’s. As a champion of the poor, Jesus experienced firsthand what he perceived to be the hard-hearted, sacrilegious ethos of his time. Distressed by this cold reality, he formed an image of "personal enrichment" that was to be "found in heaven rather than in the marketplaces of the world." As written in the Gospel of Matthew and as indicated in Jesus and Buddha, Jesus taught that in order to become perfect, you must "sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven." These humanistic tenets—including the famous saying, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God."—have great resonance in the world we live in today.

Both men also resemble each other a great deal in their respective teachings on love. Jesus and Buddha treats this category—entitled "Compassion"—as the most conspicuous area of convergence for Buddhist and Christian thought. As is written in the book, "Both teachers invoked the Golden Rule of treating others as you want them to treat you." Burnett Hillman Streeter, an Oxford scholar, is quoted in Jesus and Buddha as saying that "The moral teaching of Buddha…has a remarkable resemblance to the Sermon on the Mount."

The Sermon, a focal point in the life of the adult Jesus, is replete with sayings that appear to be a genuine reflection of what is put forth in Buddhism’s principal text, the Dhammapada ("Religious Sentences"). Jesus for example, is purported to have said in the Gospel of Luke to "Do to others as you would have them do to you." The comparison with the Dhammapada is extraordinary when we read that the Buddha, in like fashion, instructed his followers to "Consider others as yourself."

Although it is hardly Jesus and Buddha’s intent to do so, its proposition of a close doctrinal parallelism between Christianity and Buddhism gives rise to a hitherto devalued religio-historical controversy. The book directs us to a minority of scholars who posit that the doctrinal affinity between both religions is the result of "cultural borrowing." If any such borrowing truly took place, then, as Marcus Borg concedes, "the direction of borrowing would have been from the Buddha to Jesus," since the historical Buddha lived some five centuries before the birth of Christ.

To its editor’s credit (Borg after all, calls himself a "non-exclusivist Christian"), Jesus and Buddha makes several references to specific scholarly works that were written in defense of the idea that Jesus was influenced by what Thomas Cahill, the author of the bestselling How the Irish Saved Civilization, calls "the quiet refinements of Buddhism." Jesus and Buddha briefly discusses the theories broached in these scholarly works, which claim to resolve the question of how Jesus was exposed to an ideology that maturated thousands of miles away from his homeland of Palestine.

Curiously, Borg dismisses the concept of cultural borrowing as a viable explanation for the parallels in Christian and Buddhist thought. He chooses instead to attribute the parallels to a "commonality of religious experiences." By doing so, Borg conveniently sidesteps the possibility that Buddhist doctrines were transmitted to Palestine. That is to say, he rules out the possibility that Buddhist thought was physically conveyed across the great trans-continental distance that lies between Palestine and northern India, which is where Buddhism originated from. If true, it is more than likely that this transmission was conducted by various travelers who journeyed amidst the lands between the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent during ancient times, as well as during the time of Christ.

As an analogy, there is substantial evidence showing that the sources of some of Christianity’s most sacred beliefs, such as the Resurrection of Christ, are to be found in the pre-Islamic Persian religions of Mithraism and Zoroastrianism. It is believed that Mithraic and Zoroastrian doctrines were disseminated by wayfarers and traders from Persia in the Holy Land, where they were then incorporated into what was to become the Christian faith.

As much as the book Jesus and Buddha deals with issues that leave to chance how Christianity and Buddhism are rendered by the individual, collective, and historical imagination, it comes down to being a spiritual guide for those who seek moral instruction and inner strength from the best of what both religions have to offer. In coming together "in an encounter of the spirit in the West," as Jack Kornfield writes, Buddha’s and Jesus’s words are designed to lead the faithful on the same "path of liberation from our anxious grasping, resurrection into a new way of being, and transformation into the compassionate life."

Source: http://www.eclectica.org/v2n3/gaborro.html

2009-02-10T16:55:00.000-08:00

For 2000 years, Jews have rejected

the Christian idea of Jesus as messiah. Why?

It is important to understand why Jews don't believe in Jesus. The purpose is not to disparage other religions, but rather to clarify the Jewish position. The more data that's available, the better-informed choices people can make about their spiritual path.

JEWS DO NOT ACCEPT JESUS AS THE MESSIAH BECAUSE:

1) Jesus did not fulfill the messianic prophecies.
2) Jesus did not embody the personal qualifications of the Messiah.
3) Biblical verses "referring" to Jesus are mistranslations.
4) Jewish belief is based on national revelation.
At the end of this article, we will examine these additional topics:
5) Christianity contradicts Jewish theology
6) Jews and Gentiles
7) Bringing the Messiah

What exactly is the Messiah?

The word "Messiah" is an English rendering of the Hebrew word "Mashiach", which means "Anointed." It usually refers to a person initiated into God's service by being anointed with oil. (Exodus 29:7, I Kings 1:39, II Kings 9:3)

Since every King and High Priest was anointed with oil, each may be referred to as "an anointed one" (a Mashiach or a Messiah). For example: "God forbid that I [David] should stretch out my hand against the Lord's Messiah [Saul]..." (I Samuel 26:11. Cf. II Samuel 23:1, Isaiah 45:1, Psalms 20:6)

Where does the Jewish concept of Messiah come from? One of the central themes of Biblical prophecy is the promise of a future age of perfection characterized by universal peace and recognition of God. (Isaiah 2:1-4; Zephaniah 3:9; Hosea 2:20-22; Amos 9:13-15; Isaiah 32:15-18, 60:15-18; Micah 4:1-4; Zechariah 8:23, 14:9; Jeremiah 31:33-34)

Many of these prophetic passages speak of a descendant of King David who will rule Israel during the age of perfection. (Isaiah 11:1-9; Jeremiah 23:5-6, 30:7-10, 33:14-16; Ezekiel 34:11-31, 37:21-28; Hosea 3:4-5)

Since every King is a Messiah, by convention, we refer to this future anointed king as The Messiah. The above is the only description in the Bible of a Davidic descendant who is to come in the future. We will recognize the Messiah by seeing who the King of Israel is at the time of complete universal perfection.

1) JESUS DID NOT FULFILL THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES

What is the Messiah supposed to accomplish? The Bible says that he will:

A. Build the Third Temple (Ezekiel 37:26-28).

B. Gather all Jews back to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 43:5-6).

C. Usher in an era of world peace, and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease. As it says: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war anymore." (Isaiah 2:4)

D. Spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite humanity as one. As it says: "God will be King over all the world -- on that day, God will be One and His Name will be One" (Zechariah 14:9).

The historical fact is that Jesus fulfilled none of these messianic prophecies.

Christians counter that Jesus will fulfill these in the Second Coming, but Jewish sources show that the Messiah will fulfill the prophecies outright, and no concept of a second coming exists.

2) JESUS DID NOT EMBODY THE PERSONAL QUALIFICATIONS OF MESSIAH

A. MESSIAH AS PROPHET

Jesus was not a prophet. Prophecy can only exist in Israel when the land is inhabited by a majority of world Jewry. During the time of Ezra (circa 300 BCE), when the majority of xxxs refused to move from Babylon to Israel, prophecy ended upon the death of the last prophets -- Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. Jesus appeared on the scene approximately 350 years after prophecy had ended.

B. DESCENDANT OF DAVID

According to Jewish sources, the Messiah will be born of human parents and possess normal physical attributes like other people. He will not be a demi-god, (1) nor will he possess supernatural qualities.

The Messiah must be descended on his father's side from King David (see Genesis 49:10 and Isaiah 11:1). According to the Christian claim that Jesus was the product of a virgin birth, he had no father -- and thus could not have possibly fulfilled the messianic requirement of being descended on his father's side from King David! (2)

C. TORAH OBSERVANCE

The Messiah will lead the Jewish people to full Torah observance. The Torah states that all mitzvot (commandments) remain binding forever, and anyone coming to change the Torah is immediately identified as a false prophet. (Deut. 13:1-4)

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus contradicts the Torah and states that its commandments are no longer applicable. (see John 1:45 and 9:16, Acts 3:22 and 7:37) For example, John 9:14 records that Jesus made a paste in violation of Shabbat, which caused the Pharisees to say (verse 16), "He does not observe Shabbat!"

3) MISTRANSLATED VERSES "REFERRING" TO JESUS

Biblical verses can only be understood by studying the original Hebrew text -- which reveals many discrepancies in the Christian translation.

A. VIRGIN BIRTH

The Christian idea of a virgin birth is derived from the verse in Isaiah 7:14 describing an "alma" as giving birth. The word "alma" has always meant a young woman, but Christian theologians came centuries later and translated it as "virgin." This accords Jesus' birth with the first century pagan idea of mortals being impregnated by gods.

B. CRUCIFIXION

The verse in Psalms 22:17 reads: "Like a lion, they are at my hands and feet." The Hebrew word ki-ari (like a lion) is grammatically similar to the word "gouged." Thus Christianity reads the verse as a reference to crucifixion: "They pierced my hands and feet."

C. SUFFERING SERVANT

Christianity claims that Isaiah chapter 53 refers to Jesus, as the "suffering servant."

In actuality, Isaiah 53 directly follows the theme of chapter 52, describing the exile and redemption of the Jewish people. The prophecies are written in the singular form because the Jews ("Israel") are regarded as one unit. The Torah is filled with examples of the Jewish nation referred to with a singular pronoun.

Ironically, Isaiah's prophecies of persecution refer in part to the 11th century when Jews were tortured and killed by Crusaders who acted in the name of Jesus.

From where did these mistranslations stem? St. Gregory, 4th century Bishop of Nazianzus, wrote: "A little jargon is all that is necessary to impose on the people. The less they comprehend, the more they admire."

4) J-EWISH BELIEF IS BASED SOLELY ON NATIONAL REVELATION

Of the 15,000 religions in human history, only Judaism bases its belief on national revelation -- i.e. God speaking to the entire nation. If God is going to start a religion, it makes sense He'll tell everyone, not just one person. Throughout history, thousands of religions have been started by individuals, attempting to convince people that he or she is God's true prophet. But personal revelation is an extremely weak basis for a religion because one can never know if it is indeed true. Since others did not hear God speak to this person, they have to take his word for it. Even if the individual claiming personal revelation performs miracles, there is still no verification that he is a genuine prophet. Miracles do not prove anything. All they show -- assuming they are genuine -- is that he has certain powers. It has nothing to do with his claim of prophecy. Judaism, unique among all of the world's major religions, does not rely on "claims of miracles" as the basis for its religion. In fact, the Bible says that God sometimes grants the power of "miracles" to charlatans, in order to test Jewish loyalty to the Torah (Deut. 13:4).

Maimonides states (Foundations of Torah, ch. 8):

The Jews did not believe in Moses, our teacher, because of the miracles he performed. Whenever anyone's belief is based on seeing miracles, he has lingering doubts, because it is possible the miracles were performed through magic or sorcery. All of the miracles performed by Moses in the desert were because they were necessary, and not as proof of his prophecy. What then was the basis of [Jewish] belief? The Revelation at Mount Sinai, which we saw with our own eyes and heard with our own ears, not dependent on the testimony of others... as it says, "Face to face, God spoke with you..." The Torah also states: "God did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us -- who are all here alive today." (Deut. 5:3) Judaism is not miracles. It is the personal eyewitness experience of every man, woman and child, standing at Mount Sinai 3,300 years ago.

5) CHRISTIANITY CONTRADICTS J-EWISH THEOLOGY

The following theological points apply primarily to the Roman Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination.

A. GOD AS THREE?

The Catholic idea of Trinity breaks God into three separate beings: The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (Matthew 28:19). Contrast this to the Shema, the basis of xxxish belief: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is ONE" (Deut. 6:4). Jews declare the Shema every day, while writing it on doorposts (Mezuzah), and binding it to the hand and head (Tefillin). This statement of God's One-ness is the first words a Jewish child is taught to say, and the last words uttered before a xxx dies.

In Jewish law, worship of a three-part god is considered idolatry -- one of the three cardinal sins that a xxx should rather give up his life than transgress. This explains why during the Inquisitions and throughout history, Jews gave up their lives rather than convert.

B. MAN AS GOD?

Roman Catholics believe that God came down to earth in human form, as Jesus said: "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). Maimonides devotes most of the "Guide for the Perplexed" to the fundamental idea that God is incorporeal, meaning that He assumes no physical form. God is Eternal, above time. He is Infinite, beyond space. He cannot be born, and cannot die. Saying that God assumes human form makes God small, diminishing both His unity and His divinity. As the Torah says: "God is not a mortal" (Numbers 23:19).

Judaism says that the Messiah will be born of human parents, and possess normal physical attributes like other people. He will not be a demi-god, and will not possess supernatural qualities. In fact, an individual is alive in every generation with the capacity to step into the role of the Messiah. (see Maimonides - Laws of Kings 11:3)

C. INTERMEDIARY FOR PRAYER?

The Catholic belief is that prayer must be directed through an intermediary -- i.e. confessing one's sins to a priest. Jesus himself is an intermediary, as Jesus said: "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." In Judaism, prayer is a totally private matter, between each individual and God. As the Bible says: "God is near to all who call unto Him" (Psalms 145:18). Further, the Ten Commandments state: "You shall have no other gods BEFORE ME," meaning that it is forbidden to set up a mediator between God and man. (see Maimonides - Laws of Idolatry ch. 1)

D. INVOLVEMENT IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD

Catholic doctrine often treats the physical world as an evil to be avoided. Mary, the holiest woman, is portrayed as a virgin. Priests and nuns are celibate. And monasteries are in remote, secluded locations. By contrast, Judaism believes that God created the physical world not to frustrate us, but for our pleasure. xxxish spirituality comes through grappling with the mundane world in a way that uplifts and elevates. Sex in the proper context is one of the holiest acts we can perform. The Talmud says if a person has the opportunity to taste a new fruit and refuses to do so, he will have to account for that in the World to Come. Jewish rabbinical schools teach how to live amidst the bustle of commercial activity. Jews don't retreat from life, we elevate it.

6) JEWS AND GENTILES

Judaism does not demand that everyone convert to the religion. The Torah of Moses is a truth for all humanity, whether Jewish or not. King Solomon asked God to heed the prayers of non-Jews who come to the Holy Temple (Kings I 8:41-43). The prophet Isaiah refers to the Temple as a "House for all nations." The Temple service during Sukkot featured 70 bull offerings, corresponding to the 70 nations of the world. The Talmud says that if the Romans would have realized how much benefit they were getting from the Temple, they'd never have destroyed it. Jews have never actively sought converts to Judaism because the Torah prescribes a righteous path for gentiles to follow, known as the "Seven Laws of Noah." Maimonides explains that any human being who faithfully observes these basic moral laws earns a proper place in heaven.

Source: http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/jewsandjesus.htm

2009-02-10T16:43:00.000-08:00

Christ and the so-called Jewish Messiah are two vastly different concepts.

Arevordi

*********************************

Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine

Yahweh was and is the uncanniest personification of God ever ventured by humankind, and yet early in his career he began as the warrior monarch of the people we call Israel. Whether we encounter Yahweh early or late, we confront an exuberant personality and a character so complex that unraveling it is impossible. I speak only of the Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible, and not of the God of that totally revised work, the Christian Bible, with its Old Testament and fulfilling New Testament. Historicism, be it older or newer, seems incapable of confronting the total incompatibility of Yahweh and Jesus Christ.

Jack Miles, Yahweh's Boswell, in his "God: A Biography," depicts a Yahweh who begins in a kind of self-ignorance fused with total power and a high degree of narcissism. After various divine debacles, Miles decides, Yahweh loses interest, even in himself. Miles rightly reminds us that Yahweh, in II Samuel, promises David that Solomon will find a second father in the Lord, an adoption that sets the pattern for Jesus' asserting his sonship to God. The historical Jesus evidently insisted both upon his own authority to speak for Yahweh, and upon his own intimate relationship with his abba (father), and I see little difference there from some of his precursors among the charismatic prophets of Israel.

The authentic difference came about with the development of the theological God, Jesus Christ, where the chain of tradition indeed is broken. Yahweh, aside from all questions of power, diverges from the gods of Canaan primarily by transcending both sexuality and death. More bluntly, Yahweh cannot be regarded as dying. Kabbalah has a vision of the erotic life of God but severely enforces the normative tradition of divine immortality. I find nothing in theological Christianity to be more difficult for me to apprehend than the conception of Jesus Christ as a dying and reviving God.

The Incarnation-Atonement-Resurrection complex shatters both the Tanakh--an acronym for the three parts that make up the Hebrew Bible: the Torah (Five Books of Moses), Prophets, and Writings--and the Jewish oral tradition. I can understand Yahweh as being in eclipse, desertion, self-exile, but Yahweh's suicide is indeed beyond Hebraism. I can object to myself that the frequently outrageous Yahweh also baffles my understanding, and that Jesus Christ is nearly as much an imaginative triumph as Yahweh is, though in a very different mode. I alternate endlessly between agnosticism and a mystical gnosis, but my Orthodox Judaic childhood lingers in me as an awe of Yahweh.

No other representation of God that I have read approaches the paradoxical Yahweh of the J Writer. Perhaps I should omit "of God" from that sentence, since even Shakespeare did not invent a character whose personality is so rich in contraries. Mark's Jesus, Hamlet, and Don Quixote are among the principal competitors, and so is the Homeric Odysseus transmuted into the Ulysses whose story of quest and drowning reduces Dante the Pilgrim to silence. Dennis R. MacDonald, in his "The Homeric Epics and the Gospel if Mark" (2000), argues that Mark's literary culture was more Greek than Jewish, which I find persuasive in so far as the earliest Gospel's eclecticism is thus emphasized, but a touch dubious, since Mark's God remains Yahweh. Matthew is rightly known as "the Jewish Gospel"; the Gospel of Mark is something else, though it may well have been composed just after the Temple was destroyed, and in the midst of the Roman slaughter of the Jews.

Hamlet has something of the bewildering mood swings of Mark's Jesus, and of Yahweh. If Don Quixote can be regarded as the protagonist of the Spanish scripture, then his enigmas also can compete with those of the Marcan Jesus and of Hamlet. We cannot know how much of Yahweh's character and personality was invented by the J Writer [the name given to one of the biblical authors by proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis], just as Mark's Jesus to some degree seems to be an original, though doubtless informed by oral tradition just as J's Yahweh was. I wonder if the author of Mark is not responsible for giving us a Jesus addicted to dark sayings. In a "cannot know" context, where what we regard as Pauline faith replaces knowledge, Mark's brilliance exploits our limits of understanding.

His Jesus asserts authority, which sometimes masks wistfulness in regard to the will of Yahweh, the loving but inscrutable abba. Only Mark's Jesus goes through an all-night agony because his death is near. Whether, as MacDonald thinks, the suffering of Jesus emulates that of Hector at the end of the "Iliad" cannot be resolved. Jesus dies after uttering an Aramaic paraphrase of Psalm 22, an outcry of his ancestor David, a pathos distant from the Homeric variety.

Doubtless the real Jesus existed, but he never will be found, nor need he be. My sole purpose is to suggest that the historical Jesus, the theological Jesus Christ, and Yahweh are three totally incompatible personages, and to explain just how and why this is so. Of the three beings (to call them that), Yahweh troubles me the most. His misrepresentations are endless, including by much of rabbinical tradition, and by suppressed scholarship--Christian, Judaic, and secular. He remains the West's major literary, spiritual, and ideological character, whether he is called by names as various as Kabbalah's Ein-Sof ("without end") or the Qur'an's Allah. A capricious God, this stern imp, he reminds me of an aphorism of the dark Heraclitus: "Time is a child playing draughts. The lordship is the child."

Where shall we find the meaning of Yahweh, or of Jesus Christ, or of Yeshua of Nazareth? We cannot and will not find it, and "meaning" possibly is the wrong category to seek. Yahweh declares his unknowability, Jesus Christ is totally smothered beneath the massive superstructure of historical theology, and of Yeshua all we rightly can say is that he is a concave mirror, where what we see is all the distortions each of us has become. The Hebrew God, like Plato's, is a mad moralist, while Jesus Christ is a theological labyrinth, and Yeshua seems as forlorn and solitary as anyone we may know. Like Walt Whitman at the close of "Song of Myself," Yeshua stops somewhere waiting for us.

Source: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/180/story_18006_1.html

2009-02-08T16:32:00.000-08:00

The true nature of Christianity can only be fully appreciated when looked at from a Zoroastrian context.

Arevordi

***

Influence of Zoroastrianism on Judaism and Christianity

Zoroastrianism is one of the most ancient religions of the world. At one time it was the dominant religion of Iran and adjoining regions. Its popularity declined when the Islamic invaders occupied Iran and introduced Islam. A handful few who fled from Iran,after the fall of the Sassanid Empire, to escape persecution in the hands of the new rules took shelter in India. They are known today in India as Parsis, a small community that has been persistently striving ever since to keep the tenets of the religion alive, despite hardship and lack of following. Apart from them a few people in Iran continue to practice Zoroastrianism. They enjoy a minority status in Iran, an Islamic nation, with a limited degree of freedom to practice their religion. The total number of people practicing Zoroastrianism in the world today would be around 250000 of whom 80% live in India and the rest in various parts of the world including the USA. Although Zoroastrianism lost its status as a popular world religion, its study and knowledge are very useful in our understanding of the development of religious thought in the ancient world and how some of its important beliefs and practices have parallels in other religions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. The following are some of the important beliefs of Zoroastrianism.

1. Belief in Supreme and Universal God. Ahuramazda is the supreme, omniscient and omnipotent God, who symbolizes truth, radiance, purity, order, justice, courage, strength and patience. He is the creator as well as sustainer. He also protects the good from the evil and maintains order by keeping the chaotic evil at bay.

2. Belief in the duality of existence. Zoroastrians believe that the world is battle ground between good and evil forces. Although the good will ultimately triumph and the evil forces would be destroyed, Zoroastrians believe that every human has a role and responsibility in enhancing and marinating the sanctity and purity of our existence by staying away from evil, avoiding all possible contact and communication with it and by enhancing the good amidst us through religious practices and observances and adherence to the teachings of Zoroaster.

3. Belief in the divinity of creation. Zoroastrians believe that God created both the invisible and invisible worlds from Himself using His astral body and His own light. His creation is therefore very sacred and divine. It is everyone's responsibility to keep it pure and maintain the order or asha established by Him.

4. Belief in the spiritual nature of the world and human beings. Zoroastrians believe God created the spiritual entities and beings before manifesting their counterparts in the material plane. The material world consisting of fire, water, air, earth, plants, animals and humans is very much like the body of God, while His spirit rules supreme and pervades the whole creation in various aspects and entities. The fravashis or guardian spirits were created in the material plane as human beings from the primeval man, from whose seed were born Mashye and Mashyane, the first man and first woman. All the races of humanity descended from these two in due course of time.

3. Belief in polytheism. While Zoroastrians worship Ahura Mazda as the highest and supreme God, they also believe in the existence of a number of divinities who represent His good qualities and who assist Him in containing the evil in the material world. Highest among these are the six Immortal Beings or Amesha Spentas who personify His good qualities individually, followed by angels, lords or ahuras and other divinities. Sacrificial rituals called Yasnas, rituals and prayers are used to invoke these divinities on different occasions to sanctify the world and help the faithful in their lives.

4. Belief in the basic goodness of the humanity. Zoroastrians believe that human beings are essentially divine in nature and share the spiritual nature of God. So they are not born as sinners nor there is a compulsion to be a sinful. Human beings are born pure and have a choice either to follow the teachings of God and remain righteous or follow the ways of the evil and be damned. Depending upon their choices and their actions, God decides their fate in the spiritual realm. God offers knowledge of righteous conduct and provides instructions for the expiation of sin. Buy He does not make a promise to take upon Himself the sins of his worshippers.

5. Belief in the sanctity of the elements. Zoroastrians believe that God created the spiritual world before he began His material creation. The spiritual world is beyond the power of evil to infiltrate it and corrupt it. However the material creation of God does not enjoy the same immunity. It is prone to attacks from evil, who had already entered the world during the second time period and established his presence. Human beings should therefore be aware of the dangers that lurk in the material world and do their part to stay away from evil. They should neither do nor encourage any actions that would result in the tainting of the material things and the elements. Fire, water, earth and air should be kept pure by not allowing the evil entities to pollute them. They should do this by leading righteous lives and avoiding physical and mental contact with evil things such as dead and putrid matter and other impurities. The dead bodies should neither be cremated, nor thrown into water, nor buried in the earth. They should be allowed to disintegrate or consumed by vultures and other birds who have been created by God for the specific purpose.

6. Belief in the tradition of prophets. Zoroastrianism is based on the teachings of Zoroaster or Zarathushtra, the first prophet. According to legend God manifested Himself to him in a vision and revealed him the secrets of creation and the religious instructions to be followed by people on earth to pursue the path of righteousness. The teachings of Zoroaster are available to us in the Zend Avesta, the main scripture of Zoroastrians. Followers of Ahura Mazda believe the birth of Zoroaster heralded the beginning the current cycle of creation, which would last for 3000 years. During this period a prophet would appear on earth at the end of each millennium to preserve the teachings and guide the humanity. The third prophet, will be a future son of Zoroaster, whose name would be Shoshyant, who would herald the Judgment Day and the eventual destruction of evil powers in the material world.

7. Belief in afterlife. According to Zoroastrian beliefs death is as a result of the spirit leaving the body. The sanctity and purity of the body is lost once the spirit leaves it. Having left the body the soul would remain on earth for a three days and nights, hovering near the body. Then it would depart to the spiritual realm, led by Daena, the guardian spirit, where it would be greeted with a vision of the thoughts, words and actions it performed when it was inside the human body upon earth. It would then be led to the Chinawad bridge, where an angel would assess its actions and decide whether it should go to the heaven or hell for a temporary residence till the Last Judgment Day. Zoroastrianism believe in the final judgment day, on which God would resurrect all the dead and subject to a second scrutiny. All the good souls would be given a permanent place in heaven and the rest will be condemned into a purgatory till eternity. Some Zoroastrians also believe that the souls are born in the material world as per the decree of God to overcome their defects and achieve perfection. Life upon the earth is therefore a great opportunity for the souls to refine their character and become perfect beings of light. Zoroastrian texts describer heaven as a place of pure joy and happiness inundated with the light of God and hell as a cold and dark place where the evil spirits subject the sinners to gruesome punishments.

8. Belief in sin and expiation of sin. Zoroastrians believe that life upon earth is fraught with dangers because of the presence of evil. People can commit sin by not following the religious instructions of God, by not practicing the three commandments declared by Zoroaster, namely good thoughts, good words and good deeds, by indulging in sinful activities such as adultery, sodomy, theft, pollution of elements, practicing other faiths, not disposing of the dead according to the prescribed method, touching the dead matter, not offering prayers and rituals to God, performing sacrificial rituals for the daevas or evil spirits, not wearing kusti, the sacred thread and kadre, the upper garment in the prescribed manner, doing business with malicious intention or evil thoughts, not marrying according to the instructions given in the scriptures and so on. The scriptures also prescribe procedures to be followed for the expiation of certain sins, while for certain mortal sins death is recommended penalty. Heinous sins are listed in some Zoroastrian texts such as the Menog-i Khrad (Ch. 36)

9. Belief in the Judgment day. Zoroastrians believe that at the end of current cycle of 3000 years, God will destroy the evil forces in a final conflagration and herald the Judgment Day . On that day He would resurrect the dead and subject their lives to another scrutiny. Those who prove to be pious and obedient to his instructions would be suitably rewarded with an eternal life in heaven and the rest will be condemned to an eternal suffering in a purgatory.

10. Belief in the efficacy of sacrificial rituals. Zoroastrians believe in the performance of sacrificial rituals called Yasnas as an important part of their religious observance and the best means to communicate with God and His entities. The rituals constitute an important aspect of righteous conduct. The rituals are meant to purify the world and also the people involved in it. They are usually performed by qualified priests, to the accompaniment of chants from the Avesta, inside a fire temple. Zoroastrian scriptures emphasize the importance of maintaining ritual purity while performing the rituals for obtaining best results. Zoroastrians also offer five prayers every day, during different times. In addition to these they also perform an initiation ceremony called Naujote for both boys and girls before induct them into the Zoroastrian path. They also celebrate some popular festivals in honor of God and His entities.

11. Belief in the efficacy of sacred chants. Zoroastrians believe in the ritual chanting as the means to establish order and purity in the world and in the lives of the worshippers. Manthras or sacred verses from the religious texts, usually in Avestan, a sister language of Sanskrii, are chanted in a particular manner to please God and the spiritual entities. Chanting mantras is considered to be a form of practicing the three commandments, namely good thoughts, good words and good deeds.

12. Belief in the importance of righteousness. In the Zoroastrian world view, the material word is a battle ground between the good and evil forces. Human beings have a sacred responsibility to remain on the side of the good and assist God in getting rid of evil from creation permanently. Men should therefore practice righteousness, aim to cultivate the qualities of God as represented by the six Immortal Beings and promote Asha or order, Truth and righteous conduct everywhere.

Source: http://www.hinduwebsite.com/zoroastrianism/beliefs.asp

Zoroastrianism

During the 7th and 6th centuries BC the ancient polytheistic religion of the Iranians was reformed and given new dimensions by the prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathusthra). Zoroaster's life dates have been traditionally given as (c. 628 - 551 BC), but many scholars argue for earlier dates. Linguistic evidence suggests that he was born in northeastern Iran, but the prophet's message was to spread throughout the Persian Empire. Adopted as the faith of the Persian kings, Zoroastrianism became the official religion of the Achaemenid empire and flourished under its successors, the Parthian and Sassanian empires. Its theology and cosmology may have influenced the development of Greek, later Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thought. The Muslim conquest of the 7th century AD marked the beginning of a steady decline of Zoroastrianism. Persecution resulted in the migration (about the 10th century) of the majority of Zoroastrians to India, where the Parsis of Bombay are their modern descendants.

The religion of ancient Iran was derived from that of the ancient Indo Europeans, or Aryans. The language of the earliest Zoroastrian writings is close to that of the Indian Vedas, and much of the mythology is recognizably the same. Two groups of gods were worshiped, the ahuras and the daevas. The worship of the ahuras (lords) may have reflected the practice of the pastoral upper classes, and tradition holds that Zoroaster was born into a family that worshiped only the ahuras. The message of the prophet, however, was that Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, was the sole creator and lord of the world and that the worship of the daevas was the worship of evil.

In Zoroaster's theology the Amesha Spentas, or Bountiful Immortals, were divine beings who acted essentially as agents of the power of Ahura Mazda; they were traditionally seven in number: Bounteous Spirit, Good Mind, Truth, Rightmindedness, Dominion, Health, and Life. The first of these, Spenta Mainyu, is of special importance in that he is paired with a "twin," Angra Mainyu, or Hostile Spirit. When given a choice between good and evil, or truth and the lie, Bounteous Spirit chose truth and Hostile Spirit the lie. Creation becomes a battleground, with the demoted ahuras invoked for the doing of good and the daevas enlisted by Angra Mainyu in the doing of evil. Nevertheless, Ahura Mazda has decreed that truth will triumph, and the old world will be destroyed by fire and a new creation instituted.

In the period following Zoroaster, for which little evidence remains, Zoroastrianism consolidated its position and spread throughout Iran. The rise of the southern Persians and Medes seems to have been accompanied by the reinstatement of many of the ahuras, although Ahura Mazda is still recognized as supreme god. Among the most important figures to revive at this time were Mithra (Mithraism), usually associated with the sun, and Anahita, associated with the waters and fertility. Ahura Mazda (who becomes Ormazd) becomes identified with Spenta Mainyu, and Angra Mainyu (Ahriman) remains his antagonist. Ahura Mazda has relinquished some of his absolute supremacy and appears to need the assistance of the lesser ahuras, particularly Mithra, who appears as mediator and protector of the created world.

This dualist view eventually became the orthodox position. Its development may have owed much to the Magi, a hereditary priestly caste, although their role is unclear. From them, however, the Greco Roman world learned much of what it knew of the religion. An important reform movement, however, arose within Zoroastrianism - the movement around Zurvan. The Zurvanites posited a supreme god, Zurvan (Infinite Time), who had sacrificed for 1,000 years in order to gain offspring. At the end of that time he experienced momentary doubt, and from that doubt arose Ahriman; at the same time, Ormazd came into being because of the efficacy of the sacrifices. At the end of 3,000 years Ahriman crossed the void that separated them and attacked Ormazd. The two made a pact to limit the struggle, and Ahriman fell back into the abyss, where he lay for 3,000 years.

During that period Ormazd created the material and spiritual world; in retaliation, Ahriman called into being six demons and an opposing material world. In the next 3,000 year period Ahriman attempted to corrupt the creation of Ormazd; he was successful but was trapped in the world of light. The final period of 3,000 years was ushered in by the birth of Zoroaster, who revealed this struggle to man; the prophet is to be followed by three saviors, appearing at intervals of 1,000 years. At the appearance of the last, a day of judgment will occur, the drink of immortality will be offered to those who have fought against Ahriman, and a new creation will be established.

The sacred literature of Zoroastrianism is found in the Avesta, which was compiled sometime during the Sassanian period (224 - 640 AD) from much earlier materials. Only a portion of the Avesta remains, but the language of its earliest sections is extremely ancient, closely related to that of the Indian Vedas. These sections, the Gathas, are thought to be by Zoroaster himself. They are hymns and form the primary part of the Yasna, the central liturgy of the religion. Also contained in the Avesta are the Yashts, hymns to a number of the ahuras, and later in date than the Gathas. Finally comes the Videvdat, which is concerned with purity and ritual. A large body of commentary exists in Pahlavi, dating from the 9th century AD, which contains quotations from earlier material no longer extant.

The rituals of Zoroastrianism revolve around devotion to the good and the battle against the forces of evil. Fire plays a major role, being seen as the manifestation of the truth of Ahura Mazda, as preached by Zoroaster. Also important is the ritual drink, haoma, which is related to the Vedic soma.

Source: http://mb-soft.com/believe/txo/zoroastr.htm

ZOROASTRIANISM, JUDAISM, AND CHRISTIANITY

Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity share so many features that it seems that there must be a connection between them. Does this connection really exist? If so, how did it happen? And how much of the similarity between these faiths is due simply to parallel evolution, rather than direct contact and influence? The simplest answer to the first question is, yes, there is a great deal of Zoroastrian influence on Judaism and Christianity, but the problem is that it is hard to document this exactly, at least in the early stages of Judaism. The evidence is there, but it is all "circumstantial" evidence and often does not stand up to the rigorous judgment of scholarship. Nevertheless, I will dare to present these ideas assertively, with the qualification that there will likely be no definite way to prove them either true or untrue.

In 586 BCE, the forces of the Babylonian Empire conquered the Jews, destroying their Temple and carrying off a proportion of the Jewish population into exile. The captives consisted especially of educated and upper-class people as well as the royal family. This "Babylonian captivity" lasted almost fifty years. In 539 BCE the Persians, under the leadership of the Achaemenid King Cyrus, conquered Babylon, and in 538 Cyrus issued a decree stating that the Jews would be allowed to return to their homeland. Not only were the Exiles released, but Cyrus, and to some extent his Achaemenid successors, also supported the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Cyrus' policy was motivated not only by his religious tolerance (he also encouraged other, pagan peoples to maintain their own religions) but by statesmanlike wisdom; people treated generously are less likely to rebel.

But not all the Jews wanted to go home. In the years of Exile, the adaptable Jewish people had established themselves in Mesopotamia, settling there and engaging in business and even politics. Many Jews, while remaining devout Jews, did not go back to their homeland. They carried on their lives in their new home, and as the Persian Empire consolidated its rule, some Jews even rose to high positions of service in the imperial court. It was during the end of the Exile, among the Jews now living in the Persian Empire, that the first significant contact was made between the Jewish and Iranian cultures. And it is evident in the Bible that Jewish thinking changed after the Exile. The question is then: are these changes the result of the cultural meeting of Jewish and Iranian thinkers, or are these changes due to the shock of Exile? During the Exile, Jews had to change not only how they worshipped, since they no longer had their temple or the animal sacrifices which had been at the center of their faith, but also how they thought about God. The Jewish concept of God as their tribal protector, who would save them from being conquered or exiled, had to undergo revision.

I believe that both factors are present, inspiring the changes in post-exilic Judaism: not only the Jews thinking new thoughts about God and humanity, but also contact with the Zoroastrian religion of the Persian Empire. But then another question arises: how did the ancient Jews learn about Zoroastrianism? It is highly unlikely that Jewish scholars and thinkers ever directly encountered Zoroastrian scriptures such as the Gathas (the founding text of the Zoroastrian faith, attributed to the Prophet Zarathushtra himself) or the Yashts (hymns of praise to various intermediate deities and guardian spirits, adapted from pre- Zarathushtrian mythology). The priestly usage and archaic language of the Avesta scriptures would be a barrier to Jews. But most of Zoroastrianism, known and practiced among the people, existed in oral tradition: through word of mouth, not by the study of written scriptures. This oral tradition included stories about God, the Creation, the ethical and cosmic conflict of Good and Evil, the divine Judgment and the end of the world. The tradition would also include the well-known Zoroastrian symbolism of fire, light and darkness, as well as stories and prayers about the yazatas or intermediate spiritual beings and the Prophet Zarathushtra. These are all elements of what might be called "classic" Zoroastrianism (as it developed from the "primal" Zoroastrianism of the Gathas).

This is how the Jews encountered Zoroastrianism - in private dialogues and political and civic experience, rather than in formal religious studies. And as the Jewish religion was re-made after the catastrophe of the Exile, these Zoroastrian teachings began to filter into the Jewish religious culture. There are some venturesome scholars who say that the Jewish idea of monotheism was inspired by contact with Zoroastrian monotheism. While it is true that Jewish monotheistic ideas did change after the Exile, I do not believe that it was Zoroastrian contact which inspired this change. Rather, it was the fact of the Exile itself. Jewish thinkers and prophets even before the Exile were hinting at a concept of One God who was greater than just an ethnic divinity. When the Captivity threw these thinkers into a foreign culture, away from their divinely appointed homeland, it was necessary to broaden their idea of God to a more universal and abstract deity, who could be worshipped with praise and moral actions rather than animal sacrifices and liturgies. The concept of a single God whom all nations would eventually worship evolved among a conquered and exiled people no longer assured of their divinely protected status.

The Gathas of Zarathushtra, which may pre-date Cyrus by almost a thousand years, do describe God in universalist and abstract terms, but by the time of the Jewish contact, it is unclear just what type of monotheism was believed in the Zoroastrian community. Was it a true monotheism which worships only One God, to whom all other gods are either evil demons or simply non- existent? This seems to be the monotheism of Zarathushtra, but not of the Achaemenid kings of the Persian Empire, who were able to incorporate the veneration of subordinate divinities into their worship, as long as these subordinates were recognized as creations of the One God and not gods in their own right. The Jews, as we will see, would recognize angels as semi-divine intermediaries, but would not go so far as the Zoroastrians in honoring those intermediaries with hymns of praise such as the Yashts.

One of the most important differences between Jewish monotheism and Zoroastrian monotheism is that Jews recognize the one God as the source of both good and evil, light and darkness, while Zoroastrians, during all the phases of their long theological history, think of God only as the source of Good, with Evil as a separate principle. There is a famous passage in Second Isaiah, composed during or after the Exile, which is sometimes cited as a Jewish rebuke to the Zoroastrian idea of a dualistic God: "I am YHVH, unrivalled: I form the light and create the dark. I make good fortune and create calamity, it is I, YHVH, who do all this." (Isaiah 45:7) This passage, which is a major source for Jewish speculation on the source of good and evil in the world, denies the Zoroastrian idea of a God who is the source only of "good" and favorable things.

Therefore I would not say that contact with Zoroastrian monotheism influenced Jewish monotheism. The philosophical minds of the two cultures may indeed have recognized each other as fellow monotheists, but this central Jewish doctrine is one which was not learned from the Zoroastrians. It grew from the original monotheistic revelation attributed to Moses, just as Zoroastrian monotheism grew from the revelation of Zarathushtra (who may indeed have been roughly contemporary, though completely unconnected, with Moses). These were two parallel journeys towards understanding of one God.

There are other developments, however, in the Jewish faith which are much more easily connected with Zoroastrian ideas. One of the most visible changes after the Exile is the emergence of a Jewish idea of Heaven, Hell, and the afterlife. Before the Exile and Persian contact, Jews believed that the souls of the dead went to a dull, Hades-like place called "Sheol." After the Exile, the idea of a moralized afterlife, with heavenly rewards for the good and hellish punishment for the evil, appear in Judaism. One of the words for "heaven" in the Bible is Paradise - and this word, from the ancient Iranian words pairi-daeza, "enclosed garden," is one of the very few definite Persian loan-words in the Bible. This moral view of the afterlife is characteristic of Zarathushtrian teaching from its very beginning in the Gathas.

It is also thought that the Jewish idea of a coming Savior, or Messiah, was influenced by Zoroastrian messianism. Already in the book of Second Isaiah, possibly written during the Exile, the prophet speaks of a Savior who would come to rescue the Jewish people: a benefactor, "anointed" by God to fulfill his role (the word "messiah" means "anointed one"). In many verses, he identifies Cyrus the liberator as that Messiah. The growth of messianic ideas is parallel in both Jewish and Iranian thought. Zarathushtra, in his Gathas, describes a saoshyant (savior) as anyone who is a benefactor of the people. Similarly in Jewish prophecy, the Messiah is not a single special Savior but anyone who does great things for the Jewish people - even if that person is a Persian King. But as both Persian and Jewish savior-mythology evolve, the Saoshyant - and the Messiah - take on a special, individual, almost divine quality which will be very important in the birth of Christianity.

The conquests of Alexander of Macedon in the fourth century BCE created the first "global" culture (at least for the Western world) in which people, goods, and ideas could circulate from southern Europe, through the Middle East, all the way to Iran and India, and vice versa. It was in this cosmopolitan, Hellenistic world that Jews and Persians had further contact, and the Zoroastrian influence on Judaism became much stronger. This influence is clearly visible in the later Jewish writings such as the Book of Daniel and the books of the Maccabees, which were written in the second century BCE.

An interesting Biblical account of Zoroastrian-Jewish contact, as well as an early attestation of Middle Eastern petroleum, appears in the Second Book of the Maccabees (which is not found in Jewish Bibles, only in Catholic Christian ones). This document dates from about 124 BCE, which places it among the latest books of the Old Testament - so late that the Jewish canon does not recognize it. In the first chapter of this book, there is a story of how the Jewish altar fire was restored to the Temple after the Captivity. Jewish Temple practice required a continuously burning flame at the altar (Exodus 27:20) though this flame did not have the special "iconic" quality of the Zoroastrian sacred fire. Nevertheless, during the restoration of the Jewish temple, this story arose and is repeated in the Book of the Maccabees, four hundred years later: "When the matter (restoring the fire) became known and the king of the Persians heard that in the place where the exiled priests had hidden the fire a liquid had appeared, with which Nehemiah and his people had purified the materials of the sacrifice, the king, after verifying the facts, had the place enclosed and pronounced sacred." (2 Maccabees 1:33-34) This shows that at least at the time of the composition of 2 Maccabees, the Jewish writers were aware of the Zoroastrian reverence for fire - and also that, if the story is true, the Zoroastrians saw and respected similarities in practice between their own religion and that of the Jews. The fiery liquid cited here is petroleum, called "naphtha," a word which arises from a combination of Persian and Hebrew words.

The Iranian influence continues to be evident in Jewish writings from what is known as the "inter-testamental" period, that is, after the last canonical book of the Old Testament and before Christianity and the composition of the New Testament. This covers an era between about 150 BCE to 100 CE. These Jewish inter-testamental writings describe a complicated hierarchy of angelic beings, in an echo of the Zoroastrian concept of the holy court of the Yazatas. The Jewish idea of seven chief archangels probably has its inspiration in the seven Amesha Spentas, the highest guardian spirits of Zoroastrian belief. Jews had their own ideas of angels long before they encountered Zoroastrianism; angels were nameless, impersonal representatives of God's message and action. But after the Exile, Jewish angels gain names and personalities, and also are spoken of as guardians of various natural phenomena, just like the Zoroastrian yazatas. The Jewish and Christian idea of a personal "guardian angel" may also have been inspired by the Zoroastrian figure of the fravashi, the divine guardian-spirit of each individual human being.

Zoroastrian influence on Judaism is also evident in the evolution of Jewish ideas about good, evil, and the End of Time. The original statement of the famous Zoroastrian dualism of good and evil is found in the Gathas, where Zarathushtra describes the two conflicting principles of good and evil in what might be called psychological, or ethical terms. Human beings are faced with the existence of good and evil within themselves - he describes these principles as the "beneficent" and the "hostile" spirits - and everyone must make the choice for Good in order to follow God's will.

But by the Hellenistic era, Zoroastrianism had already developed its doctrine of "cosmic dualism" - the idea that the entire Universe is a battlefield between the One Good God, Ahura Mazda, and the separate Spirit of Evil, Ahriman. This view of dualism is a symbolic transformation, and an expansion, of the more psychologically based teaching of Zarathushtra that good and evil are ethical choices and states of mind.

[..]

Source: http://www.pyracantha.com/zjc3.html

Was Christ a Jew?

2009-02-08T11:11:00.000-08:00

Was Christ a Jew?

Conventional Christian theology places too much emphasis on the literal interpretations of traditional Jewish scriptures while neglecting the vast and complex histories, philosophies and theologies of the ancient Near East and Asia Minor. Regardless of New Testament passages suggesting a Jewish lineage to Christ, the very essence of Christ and Christianity are exclusively Pagan in nature, thereby canceling out any possibility that he may have been a Jewish rabbi, or the Jewish Messiah. What's more, although Christ is said to have lived within Palestine during the first century AD, we the faithful must remember that Christ was God manifest. Thus, humanizing him or making him out to be a mere Jew, an African, or a Scandinavian for that matter, is an affront to the universal reality of a supreme deity. What’s more, Christ’s philosophies and all subsequent theologies associated with traditional Christianity are virtually all non-Jewish in nature and character as well. There are many aspects of church rituals within the Catholic and Orthodox faiths that are strikingly Pagan in character. However, for the purpose and intent of this article I will only specifically address the non-Judaic nature of Christ and not dwell on the many Pagan rituals that exist within the traditional Christian churches.

To begin with, it is no secret that many Jewish scholars throughout history have suggested that Christ was not a Jew. The Talmud, the absolute scriptural authority within Judaism, clearly suggests that Christ was not a Jew. However, let us put aside for a moment what they, or what we Christians for that matter, have to say about Christ and let's begin to look at the very nature of Christ and the theologies and philosophies he represented more closely.

Many biblical scholars today agree that when Christ preached to the masses in Palestine he quoted exclusively from the Septuagint. This practice would be odd for a Jew because the Septuagint was the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures that Jewish scholars and rabbinical authorities throughout history have strongly condemned as utterly corrupted by Paganism. A simple question arises here: Why did Christ not quote from traditional Hebrew texts, the Tanakh/Torah, and instead chose to quote texts that Jews universally claim to be pagan corrupted?

It is also worthy to note that Christ's Jewish followers, his apostles, seem to have been Hellenized Jews. Moreover, why did Christ speak Aramaic (a language that is perhaps an off-shoot of ancient Armenian) and not Hebrew, the language of the Israelites? More importantly, why were the very first worshipers of the infant Christ Zoroastrian priests, the three Magi of the east? In antiquity, the East referred to the Armenian Highlands. Why are there discrepancies regarding Christ's Jewish genealogy in the Gospels? And finally, how did Christianity spread like wildfire through the Pagan world and got virtually no where within traditional Jewish society? The answer to this question can't be Jewish persecution of Christians because Pagans at the time were equally notorious for their persecution of Christians.

I am not surprised at how fast Greeks, Assyrians, Armenians, Copts, Ethiopians, Romans and Hellenized Jews embraced Christianity, these people recognized God’s manifestation on earth and his universal message. The social egalitarianism, universality of the Triune God and the theological concepts represented by Christ and his message were familiar to the ancient Pagans of the Mediterranean basin, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. This familiarity of pagans towards Christs nature, in essence, explains the unprecedented and astronomically fast spread of the Christian faith. In my opinion, Christ was the God known to all gentiles under different names and different forms at different times and different locations. And for reasons yet unknown, his last manifestation was in Palestine approximately two thousand years ago. It is crucial, however, to remember that Palestine at the time was heavily influenced by Greeks, Egyptians and Romans. Moreover, the general region of Palestine, which was adjacent to the great pagan theological centers of Alexandria, Byblos and Babylon, was also home to many pagan cults and Greco-Roman and Zoroastrian centers of worship.

Pagan influences upon Judaism and Christianity

There is not much that is unique within Judaic belief. The Jewish biblical traditions, which are known to have been compiled within the first century AD, are not original theological concepts. Upon close analysis, they seem to be nothing more than reinterpretations of the aforementioned pagan traditions, the overpowering foreign traditions that they were exposed to during their long and turbulent national journey. Since Babylon has a very bad reputation within religious circles, for the sake of objectivity it should be mentioned that ancient Babylon was a great center of theology, a city within which existed good and evil, truth and lie, God and Satan.

Within this perspective let’s look at some of the key locations, events and individuals within Jewish sacred tradition that are inherently tied to Babylon: Abraham the “father” of Jews was from Urfa, the Armenian Highlands. Noah, the second Adam, was a Sumerian. The Garden of Eden is said to have been located within historic Armenia. Well known to us all, the known world at the time was repopulated after the Great Deluge from the Armenian region of Mount Ararat. And finally, the longterm captivity of the Jewish nation within Babylon. Thus, simply taking into account the aforementioned core biblical tales and beliefs, it should be easy to see that the core foundations of the sacred scriptures found within the Jewish Torah (the first five books of the Jewish Tanakh) were clearly non-Jewish in nature and may have actually been Anatolian and/or Mesopotamian in origin. It is also important to note here that the sacred traditions of the Persians, Armenians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Indians and the Hellenic world predated that of Judaism by many centuries.

In the opinion of many scholars, it was precisely during the captivity of the Jews (sixth century BC) within Babylon that the Hebrew tribal deity known as Yahweh began taking more recognizable forms that are familiar to us Christians today. Observing religion from this perspective, it is easy to conclude that Christianity was the natural continuation and/or evolution of the primordial realization by man of a universal creator God. This primordial realization by man clearly echoes the well known biblical accounts of the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood and the Tower of Babylon. Civilized man first lived, as the biblical and archaeological sources attest, within Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, known universally as the Cradle of Civilization.

Council of Nicaea

When one closely studies the Christian Gospels and the Jewish scriptures one clearly sees that there are essentially no similarities between the nature, ethics and theosophies associated with the Triune God of Christianity and the tribal deity found within the so-called Old Testament - other than the ones that seem to be coincidental or simply contrived by Christ's Jewish apostles in order to "fit" Christ into Hebrew society and tradition. Some Christian apologists today claim that pagan element that may exist within Christianity was a result of doctrinal formulations made during the Church councils such as the Council of Nicaea, the first major convention of prominent Christian leaders held within Byzantium in 325 AD under the close supervision of the pagan Emperor Constantine the Great.

It should be taken into consideration that prior to the Council of Nicaea there were many popular forms of Christianity in existence and some of the them, such as the Marcionites, wanted nothing to do Judaic traditions. However, when the powerful Roman Emperor at the time cast his final verdict all other Christian schools of thought simply disappeared. The Emperor Constantine chose a school of thought that essentially combined the Christian and Jewish traditions, known at the time as the Pauline sect of Christianity. The Pauline Christians, with the Emperor's stamp of approval, proved to be very violent, mercilessly eradicating all other groups that opposed them. Another consequence of the church council was the rejection and subsequent destruction of various troublesome texts at the time that simply did not fit into the Pauline mentality, such as the Gospels of Thomas.

Why did Constantine take this action? Based on contemporary accounts, Constantine was a very warlike man. He was a proud pagan until the last day of his life. He was cunning and he was ruthless. After the split of the Rome Empire, Constantine found himself ruling over a large number of Jews, many of them prominent, within his eastern half of the Roman Empire. It is also said that Constantine had many prominent Jews within his royal court. Some historians claim that Constantine intent at Nicaea was to unite his pagan, Christian and Jewish subjects under one religious banner. At the time, Jews and Christians formed a large minority in the Roman Empire. After the final sacking of Jerusalem by Rome, the wealthy Hellenized Jews, as well as many ordinary Jews, moved into Roman held territories. The famous Roman Jewish historian Josephus is just one example. Let's also not forget that at the time in question religion was a powerful sociopolitical institution, much like what democracy, capitalism, socialism or communism are today. Thus, directly controlling a given population's religion meant controlling the population. Therefore, as a result of the geopolitical climate within the eastern Roman Empire at the time we got the brand of Christianity tat we are familiar with today.

Non-Judaic tenants within Christianity

It is also important to note that Palestine at the time of Christ had a strong cult called the Essenes. This was a reclusive group of eccentric individuals who's members chose to abandon earthly possessions and live aesthetic lives in the desert. Historians today consider the Essenes to be more-or-less a Zoroastrian cult within Palestine. This group is also said to have been severely persecuted by orthodox Jews at the time. According to many biblical scholars, the Essene connection to early Christianity is very strong. Many of the social attributes associated with early Christians closely resemble that of the Essenes. Some prominent biblical scholars even claim that John the Baptist and Christ may have been Essenes as well. Perhaps the narrated friction that existed in the Gospels between the John the Baptist and the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the ultimate beheading of John the Baptist authenticates this speculation.

Nevertheless, let's keep in mind that biblical scholars state that the scriptures were written within a generation or two after Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. Thus, the following non-Jewish elements within Christianity existed generations before the famous Council of Nicaea. Therefore, no one can rightfully claim that the Nicaean Council, or any other church council for that matter, manipulated the scriptures of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and various other agnostic gospels in order to incorporate pagan beliefs into the Christian texts.

Intentions of the apostles

The apostles of Christ seem to have gone to great lengths to directly connect the risen Christ to Hebrew scripture within their writings. Perhaps this was done by the followers of Christ in order to convert Jews at the time from their seemingly primitive and corrupt faith. The aforementioned is precisely the reason why there seem to be contrived attempts by the apostles connecting Christ to the Hebrew scriptures. Attempts such as making Christ sit on a donkey and enter Jerusalem, as prophesied in Hebrew scriptures, to convince the Jews that Christ was indeed their long awaited Messiah. Unfortunately, our present day knowledge and understanding of Christ is primarily based upon these contrived attempts of the apostles. Nevertheless, the attempts of the apostles would prove to be a futile effort in the long run.

The rejection of "Christ" by Judaism

Christ, as God on earth, was such an indigestible theosophical concept for a great majority of Jews at the time that he was mercilessly tortured and put to death. But for whatever reason, the Jewish followers of Christ, namely Paul, were very concerned about convincing the Jewish population of Asia Minor and the Levant at the time that Christ was their long awaited Messiah. Nevertheless, even after the many contrived efforts, the general population, especially the religious establishment did not recognize Christ to be their promised Messiah. I personally think that the Jews at the time would have been better able to recognize their promised Messiah, at the very least - much better than us pagans. And to this day, Jewish theologians scoff at us Christians when we tell them that our Christ-God was their promised Messiah.

I once heard a Rabbi state - “you [Christians] have stolen our watch and for two thousand years have been telling us what time it is.” He was clearly implying that we Christians have taken their sacred scriptures, the Tanakh/Torah, and for two thousand years we have been 'reinterpreting' it for them. The comments of the Rabbi have profound implications for the so-called Old Testament is their national/ethnic holy book, they are the ones that should know it intimately - not us pagans.

Frankly, I do not blame the Jews for rejecting Christ because Christ was not their expected savior, their promised Messiah, a King that would save the Jewish nation from pagan oppression as promised to them by Yahweh. And that, as well as Christ's early popularity amongst the peasants of the region, was precisely the reason why the Jewish religious establishment at the time became extremely concerned about Christ's corrupting influence over the Jewish faithful. As a result, the Jewish authorities considered Christ to be a wizard, a wicked man, and a man that represented a belief system associated with paganism. Nothing about Christ other than the coincidental and/or the contrived was what Jews at the time were expecting in their Messiah - according to their sacred scriptures.

However, our Triune God was a universal deity known to ancient man throughout Asia Minor. I also believe that in addition to John the Baptist, who as I stated earlier is said to be an Essene, individuals such as Pythagoras, Zoroaster and Buddha were also prophets sent by the supreme creator God in order to "prepare the way" for Christ. The problem within Christendom today is its biblical fundamentalism, as exemplified by the Evangelical movement within the United States, that basically shuts out all other theological concepts and literature as the works of the Devil. In my opinion, however, the theosophies and rituals associated with Christ are fundamentally non-Hebraic in nature and origin. Any serious or well learned theologian would be able to make that speculation, if not out right conclusion.

However, a question still remains. Regardless of Christ's nature, why did God manifest himself within Palestine? I'm afraid that is a question that only God can answer. Nevertheless, if one takes into consideration the claim attributed to Christ that he was on earth to cure the sick and not the healthy, one may easily conclude the following: What people do we know of in that region of the world that most needed Christ's healing powers?

Arevordi

The Non-Judaic Nature of Christ

2009-02-08T10:36:00.000-08:00

The Non-Judaic Nature of Christ

The primary purpose of this blog is an attempt to debunk traditionally held belifes that Jesus Christ was the Jewish Messiah that the Jews rejected and crucified. The nature of Christ and the mere notion of a Jewish Messiah are two vastly different concepts; the two simply cannot be the same being. The Triune God of Christianity, represented by God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, is not a petty tribal god , it is the supreme creator deity known to all of mankind since the dawn of time. I pray that one day we Christians, especially the evangelicals amongst us, will realize this fact and stop preaching an absurd theological paradox known today as Judeo-Christian belief system. Allow me to first begin by stating that the nature and character of Christ our God has more in common with Zoroaster's Ahura Mazda (Armenian: Aramazd) than with Moses' tribal god called Yahweh.

I accept traditional Christianity, in particular Orthodox Christianity, simply as a national/cultural expression and as one that compared to other Christian faiths most closely represents the true essence of Christ. However, spiritually, I am far from being considered a traditional Christian in the sense that I reject the so-called "Old Testament" (the Hebrew Torah/Tanakh) and its blood thirsty, oppressive and jealous tribal god called Yahweh. In my opinion, and in the opinion of many early Christians, the divine Trinity we believe in has nothing to do with Hebrew scriptures and even less to do with their god, Yahweh. The present face/character of traditional Christianity is a direct result of a shrewd political move by Constantine the Great of Rome at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. Constantin's primary intention was to unite his empire's large Pagan, Christian and Jewish populations under one system. As a result, mainline Christians today are the inheritors of Constantin's theopolitical formulations, or manipulations. Thus, as a result of Constantin's actions, traditional Christianity today has inherent flaws and inconsistencies emanating out of a political attempt by special interests at the time, be it Roman or Hellenized Jew, to combine the story of the Godman Christ with that of the Jewish Messiah.

Back to the basics:

JEWS DO NOT ACCEPT CHRIST AS THE MESSIAH BECAUSE -

1) Christ/Jesus did not fulfill the messianic prophecies

2) Christ/Jesus did not embody the personal qualifications of the Messiah

3) Biblical verses in the Hebrew texts supposedly "referring" to Christ/Jesus are mistranslations

4) Jewish belief system is ethnocentric, it is a national revelation

5) Christianity contradicts core tenants in Jewish theology

A Jewish theologian once said:"Christians stole our watch, and for two thousand years they have been telling us what time it is."

I happen to strongly agree with the Rabbi here. Let's stop pretending that we Christians of various Pagan backgrounds know better than Jews who or what their long awaited Messiah is or was.

Moreover, it also needs to be mentioned here that ancient Hebrews originated within the Armenian Highlands. They were most probably related to the proto-Armenian Huri tribe or the proto-Kurdish Hibaru tribe or more likely, both. Needless to point out, their early sacred literature, from the creation account to the great flood, takes place primarily within the Armenian Highlands. Their patriarch, Abraham, was a native of the ancient Armenian town of Urfa (Edessa). Genetic tests conducted on modern Jews reveal that their phenotype can be traced to Anatolia. It is also very interesting to point out that we Armenians call Hebrews - Hria, which linguistically has the same value as the name, Huri; the proto-Armenian Hurrian tribe s of the Armenian Highlands that rose to prominence in the second millennium BC around the region of lake Van. Nonetheless, since we not too long ago celebrate the birth of our Godman Christ in Palestine, I want you all to meditate and reflect on this very poignant event: When Christ, our Lord and savior, was born in Bethlehem the Jewish king sought to murder him - as three Zoroastrian priests from Persia were searching for Christ to worship him... Unlike Jews, Pagans of the time recognized Christ exactly for who he was - God on earth.

How could one reconcile or associate the following natures and characteristics of Christ and Christianity with classical Judaism? A brief look at the non-Jewish nature of Christianity as it existed at the time of Christ:

The Holy Trinity (had similar counterparts only within the Pagan world)

The Holy Spirit (appears exclusively within the Christian Gospel and the only other place that such a being is mentioned is within the Zoroastrian Avesta)

God being all good, not capable of evil (exclusively Zoroastrian in nature)

The Son of God (a non-Jewish concept that was ubiquitous within the Pagan world)

The nature and order of the angelic world in Christianity (exclusively Zoroastrian in nature)

Nature of the spirit world (Pagan)

The virgin giving birth to God (exclusively Pagan)

God descending to earth to dwell with mankind (Pagan in nature)

God being all-good, compassionate and loving (exclusively Zoroastrian in nature)

Last judgment at the end-days (Pagan)

A savior coming to earth to save all of mankind (Pagan)

Cleansing and purification rites through water (Pagan)

Partaking in a communal meal as ritual (Pagan/Mithraic)

The nature of Satan, heaven and hell (exclusively Zoroastrian in nature)

Divine numerology, symbolic numbers such as forty, seven, three, twelve, etc. found throughout Christian and Hebrew scriptures (Pagan)

Do not lose faith in Christ as many do once traditionally held beliefs concerning him are challenged. Allow your faith in him grow even stronger when you begin seeing his boundless nature and divine essence in a new light.

Arevordi