So, Dionysus was a Copy of Moses, may One Presume?

somewhere else : So, Dionysus was a Copy of Moses, may One Presume? · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Historicity of Moses Revisited

Acharya S (a k a D. M. Murdock) does it again. And so presumable she will be doing for some time, I do not want her to stand uncontradicted though.

Here she quotes Voltaire, so the following is my quote of Voltaire via Acharya:*

The ancient poets have placed the birth of Bacchus in Egypt; he is exposed on the Nile and it is from that event that he is named Mises by the first Orpheus, which, in Egyptian, signifies "saved from the waters"… He is brought up near a mountain of Arabia called Nisa [Nysa], which is believed to be Mount Sinai. It is pretended that a goddess ordered him to go and destroy a barbarous nation and that he passed through the Red Sea on foot, with a multitude of men, women, and children. Another time the river Orontes suspended its waters right and left to let him pass, and the Hydaspes did the same. He commanded the sun to stand still; two luminous rays proceeded from his head. He made a fountain of wine spout up by striking the ground with his thyrsus, and engraved his laws on two tables of marble. He wanted only to have afflicted Egypt with ten plagues, to be the perfect copy of Moses.

OK. Possible. Let us take chronology. Dionysus is a Greek divinity so recent that Homer (c. 800 BC he wrote Iliad and Odyssey) does not know him. That is well after Moses. Time enough for the old Hebrews to remember him correctly and for Pagans to remember him wrong.

I have previously reasoned or guessed that Deukalion and Pyrrha (the Flood surviving childless old couple in Greek Mythology) are based on:
1) Noah and Family (Flood survivors)
2) Abraham and Sarah (a so far childless old couple when visited by three angels who announced also the coming destruction of Sodom)
3) Lot and two daughters (hospitable survivors of a disaster similar to the Flood, though geographically limited, and faced after being saved with some conundrum about how to repeople the world (in Genesis it is only an imagined conundrum, imagined by the two daughters who thought the world had been destroyed but for them: when they soaked their father drunk he made them pregnant with Moab and Ammon).

If Orpheus (supposing Orpheus the husband of Eurydice to be the one to whom Voltaire referred as to "the first Orpheus") said such things about Dionysus, he might have similarily been getting the story of Moses in a distorted fashion.

I think Pagans had a reason to distort the stories. Step one, they leave out things they do not want to believe. Step two, they put in things, preferrably from stories already known and which may well be true ones too, to fill the gaps in the story.

What is left out in the Deukalion and Pyrrha story? The Miracle of Sarah's pregnancy and the fact that Sodomy was the third and final of the Sins leading God to decide the destruction.

The first of these woud to a Pagan, used to judging hopes and fears after how things usually go, as a foolhardy miracle to hope for and a stupidity to believe in.

As to the second, since the time of Hercules (reputed a lover of Iolaus), Greeks had more and more been lenient on sodomy, if not in legislation at least in talking about peopple outside their own jurisdiction.

Now, Voltaire analysed himself that the one thing left out from the story of Dionysus, if a copy from that of Moses, are the ten plagues. Not quite left out though. Pentheus would in such a case echo the Pharao. But in the main yes.

Reason? Well, Moses had argued that the Pharao insulted the law of the one God whose chosen people the Israelites were (as the Catholics are today, by the way, though with other duties to those outside, since that is indeed for all nations).

Would that not have struck a false note with people who believed in many gods and in equal or nicely graduated degrees of favour by the gods?

And furthermore, the Israelites were described as being held as slaves: those being the chosen people might very well have struck a Pagan who believed slaves were such by nature or divine decision as very awkward to believe or accept.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou Library
St Carina and martyrdom of
Bishop Jón Arason (in 1541)
7 - XI - 2012

*Stellar House Publishing : The Moses-Dionysus Connection
http://stellarhousepublishing.com/moses-dionysus.html

---

Appendix : Egyptian evidence for Moses

If above is correct, the Dionysus cult is, from Orpheus on a Thracian and from after Homer but before Hesiod a Greek independent testimony for the existance of Moses.

But would not Egyptian evidence be even better?

We might have exactly that. But first a piece of Chronology. Here I state that I believe Protestants to be wrong and Martyrologium Romanum to be right in Chronology. Now, Protestants would place the Exodus from Egypt in B.C. 1446, the Martyrology places it 1510 years before the birth of Christ. This means Moses striking the Egyptian Overseer to death was 1550 years before Christ.

Keep that in mind as we read following extract from the article I link to on that one.**

One of the last kings of the 12th dynasty was Sesostris III. His statues depict him as a cruel tyrant quite capable of inflicting harsh slavery on his subjects. His son was Amenemhet III, who seems to have been an equally disagreeable character. He probably ruled for 46 years, and Moses would have been born near the beginning of his reign.

Amenemhet III may have had one son, known as Amenemhet IV, who was an enigmatic character who may have followed his father or may have been a co-regent with him. If the latter, Amenemhet IV could well have been Moses. Amenemhet IV mysteriously disappeared off the scene before the death of Amenemhet III.

Amenemhet III had a daughter whose name was Sobekneferu. It is known that she had no children.6 If she was the daughter of Pharaoh who came down to the river to bathe, it is easy to understand why she was there. It was not because she had no bathroom in her palace. She would have been down there taking a ceremonial ablution and praying to the river god Hapi, who was also the god of fertility. Having no children she would have needed such a god, and when she found the beautiful baby Moses there she would have considered it an answer to her prayers (Exodus 2:5–6).

But when Moses came of age he identified himself with the people of Israel and was obliged to flee from Egypt. This left a vacuum on the throne, and when Amenemhet III died there was no male successor. Sobekneferu ascended the throne and ruled for 8 years as a Pharaoh, but when she died the dynasty died and was succeeded by the 13th dynasty.

And a little further on David Down identifies the last pharao to have a scarab in Kahun, Neferhotep I, with the Pharao of whom Moses demanded the release of Israelites.

According to Manetho, he was the last king to rule before the Hyksos occupied Egypt ‘without a battle’. Without a battle? Where was the Egyptian army? It was at the bottom of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:28). Khasekemre-Neferhotep I was probably the pharaoh of the Exodus. His mummy has never been found.

HGL
*HGL's F.B. writings : Disagreeing about age of flood. (et c)
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.fr/2012/10/disagreeing-about-age-of-flood-et-c.html

**I link to:
CMI : Searching for Moses by David Down
http://creation.com/searching-for-moses

---

Appendix B : what about Kontiki Viracocha? Another Pagan calque of Christian figures?

If missionaries came to anywhere in Northern South America or Southern North America or Central America before Columbus, say in Roman times, and were not in the end followed by a population surviving to our times, the legend of Kontiki Viracocha alias Quetzalcoatl (which seems to be Aztek for Geek/Scholar or something) may be a distorted memory thereof.

As distorted as Dionysus from Moses or as Deukalion and Pyrrha from Noah et c.

The man is white and haas a beard. That would mean some kind of European or Mediterranean.

He orders human sacrifice to cease. That is one thing a Christian missionary would do.

His orders were not obeyed. This is what would have happened if a mission failed. And a failed mission would explain a persistent Paganism quite able to distort the story so as to leave out more specifically Christian parts, or so as to attribute what a missionary attributed to Christ to the memory of the missionary rather than that of the God-Man he came for./HGL

Did the Gospellers plagiarise Mexican Myth, Acharya?

"Our Lord and Savior Quetzalcoatl" / Freethoughtnation
http://freethoughtnation.com/contributing-writers/63-acharya-s/596-our-lord-and-savior-quetzalcoatl.html

I think that geographically and chronologically impossible.

Mexican myth may have plagiarised Gospel story:
1) by human means if missionaries reached new world before Spaniards, or if 1492 - 1520's were sufficient space of time for Mexican pagans to develop a new myth OR:
2) by diabolical means, the devil plagiarising the Gospel story as already known.

Detail:

The Aztec godman descends into the underworld, where he "gathers the bones of the human beings of the previous epochs," while, in the apocryphal text [The Gospel of Nicodemus], Christ resurrects several kings and prophets of previous epochs out of the underworld. Quetzalcoatl's blood is used to convey life to the humans whose bones he saved, while Christ's blood delivers eternal life and saves humans from death.

As to Christ resurrecting several kings and prophets of previous epochs, it seems to have better authority than Gospel of Nicodemus.

[Matthew 27:52] And the graves were opened: and many bodies of the saints that had slept arose, [53] And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, came into the holy city, and appeared to many.

Haydock Commentary:

The rocks were rent, and the graves were opened: and many bodies of the saints ... arose. St. Jerome takes notice, that these saints did not rise with their bodies till after Christ was risen; and so it follows, that going out of the graves, after the resurrection, they came into the holy city, (i.e. into Jerusalem) and appeared to many. (Witham) --- This event was a prophecy of the fatal destruction that was shortly to fall upon the temple; and also, that it should henceforth give place to things more noble and sublime. It likewise shews that greatness of Christ's power. (St. Chrysostom, hom. lxxxix.)

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Le Havre
St Raphaël
24/X/2012

Lewis and Nagel Against Materialist Monism

I will copy one wiki about Thomas Nagel's book Mind and Cosmos:

Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False is a 2012 book by Thomas Nagel, Professor of Philosophy at New York University.

Overview

In the book, Nagel argues that the materialist version of evolutionary biology is unable to account for the existence of mind and consciousness, and is therefore at best incomplete. He writes that mind is a basic aspect of nature, and that any philosophy of nature that cannot account for it is fundamentally misguided.[1] He argues that the standard physico-chemical reductionist account of the emergence of life - that it emerged out of a series of accidents, acted upon by the mechanism of natural selection - flies in the face of common sense.[2]

Nagel's position is that principles of an entirely different kind may account for the emergence of life, and in particular conscious life, and that those principles may be teleological, rather than materialist or mechanistic. He stresses that his argument is not a religious one, and that it is not based on intelligent design (ID), though he writes that ID proponents such as Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, and David Berlinski do not deserve the scorn with which their ideas have been met by parts of the scientific establishment.[3]

Notes
^ see p. 16ff.
^ pp. 5-6
^ p. 10

I will now ask readers of C. S. Lewis which book they are reminded of. It is not exactly one of the Narnias. Nor is it the Perelandra Trilogy, though parts of That Hideous Strength spring to mind. It is a book which he debated with a contemporary philosopher. Miracles. 1947.

C. S. Lewis' argument for Theism as of Christian / Jewish / Moslem / Platonist form begins with an identical argument or nearly so which is indistinct as to Theism, Pantheism, Dualism, Averroism, but which rules out Materialism. He then goes about to rule out Averroism and Pantheism: if God is doing all the thinking, why would he impose on himself to think wrongly through human reasoners who are mistaken? After that he rules out Dualism too: imagining the good and evil principles, or for that matter simply mind and matter as side-by-side, both ignores part of our common sense experience of them (mind ruling matter is for good of both, matter ruling mind is of ill of both, good is selfcontained, ill and evil is parasitic) and smuggles in the idea of "a common space" in which both could exist side by side.

The contemporary philosopher, I think she was called Anscombe, did not radically challenge the ruling out of Averroism or Dualism as much as attack CSL's attack on Naturalism - or what Thomas Nagel calls Materialism.

I would ask two things of Thomas Nagel:

• if his "Materialism" is any different from the "Naturalism" in CSL's Miracles
• if not, and in case he answers either that or CSL's outruling of Averroism (non-Theist Jews tend to late Averroist Spinoza) in the book, then notify me about that please. Right now I have no access to it.

From the rest I ask that readers of Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos also check out C. S. L's Miracles.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibl. Audoux, Paris
St Eustace
20th September 2012

PS: I do not think Creation Science deserves the scorn given it by scientific establishment either. But that is not in either Nagel or Lewis (at least not that book, though he later wrote an essay called Funeral of a Great Myth), so you may check out my stance on my Creationist blog.

And if you do not know how to find the books, I will give links to Amazon: Mind and Cosmos, and Miracles. I might be back on topic after looking at preview pages in either of the two books.

Answering Architectus777 and First a Bit of Dawkins

Richard Dawkins says that* due to phantastic evolution we have brains that bring into the universe, maybe for the first time things like love and value and purpose.

He could have added, of course, thought. And everything else that comes to mind when we think of mind. And of mind itself.

Problem is: his explanation is about some supposed reality way before grandpa was a child when there was no purpose, no love, no life and of course no mind either.

Problem is: he thinks adding phantastic complexities to brains somehow make them capable of adding to the things that really are there. If atoms and so on is all there really is, if life is one kind of interplay of atoms and dead matter very similar to it in any essential way, then Dawkins' explanation is no explanation. Just because you can in the English language string together a proposition and prefix it with "because" does not mean it is a valid explanation.

But I was actually going to write another response to another video.

Architectus777 writes beneath his youtube:**

I have so many questions about the God idea that I can't answer, but maybe there is someone out there so brilliant that they can. Where are you? Please leave a video response if you care to answer any of the questions. Only a video response please.

I admit I was so eager to answer that I forgot the part of only a video response. Did you click the link and see the video?

Good, for here are my comments in chronological order:

0:23 Thoughts of Humans take time to work and must be processed. It is called reasoning. All thought or mind is called intellect, because it understands, but human mind processes, angelic and above all divine mind does not.

Once a thought made sense in one instant, and I filled in afterwards.

01:33 God does not gain new memories. Memory is the mode of an insight related to the past God is above that, and therefore improperly said of God. However forgetfulness is quiet properly denied of God.

03:33 God from all of His Eternity to all of His Eternity is Aware of every moment he has created (including the beginning of the Universe) in addition to being aware of His own eternal being in Three Persons, each of them aware of and adoring and loving the two others.

04:23 You cannot add to infinity. God is not gaining "new memories" and he is not loosing "older" ones. And new and old are not about how God is getting things, either Each Other (Father, Son and Holy Ghost) or His Creation. Or any moment of history of creatures, or any combination, such as Man-God, Jesus Christ. However, in his Human nature Christ could very well gain new experiences and did all through his life (He's the second person, by the way, the Son, in case you forgot).

05:16 Time is not eternal, and God unchangingly had decided from all eternity when time was to be created.

If you think of what you draw, think of God as drawing one line called "beginning of time" and another called "judgement day" and between them A Cross and an Empty Grave. All other is filled in between or around these.

06:36 The point called "beginning of time" and the point called "judgement day" and the point of Calvary are all sovereignly decided by God. From his view he could have chosen any other point if he had wanted to. But he also decided how much time elapses between them. You cannot arbitrarily say, nor I, that the universe could be so much older or younger than it is. We are here with what God actually did. The decision is not ours.

07:08 If you have a purpose of beauty when you start a drawing, is it not still arbitrary for you where you set your pencil or pen?

At least in the sense that no one else than you can give the exact reason you felt for chosing that point rather than the other one.

And we are other than God, we are just his creatures.

08:09 If you are right about protons, in the main, there are not just gluon, upquarks and downquark, there is also a positive charge involved in the proton.

As for God, he is identical to the attributes which we are told about as forming different attributes. God is not dependent.

Neither God nor existence nor life nor intelligence can be dependent on anything lacking itself.

There is God who exists, lives and is wise. There are existent things created by Him who exist, [et c.]

14:09 Existence does not emerge from non-existant attributes. Life does not emerge from non-living attributes. Mind does not emerge from mindless attributes.

God does not emerge, He is eternal.

Created existence or life or mind are created rather than emerging and from God rather than from inferior attributes.

I tried to add another comment but could not. So I sent it to him, here is our correspondence, beginning with my missive:

mind adding this above my coments, youtube keeps saying error, try again?

It's not a question of having a greater mind than you, just of having heard the answers.

Look them up in Summa Theologiae by St Thomas Aquinas (available in original Latin, but also in English, French, German translations: English one is available on newadvent dot org slash summa and you are basically asking for part I).

(It is for the youtube I have already commented so much on, questions about God)

Really? Aquinas doesn't answer my questions. He is an outdated philosopher with weak philosophy.

He answered everyone of them.

In philosophy there is no such thing as outdated.*** There is such a thing as refuted, and he refuted your positions in advance.

Glad you think so, but I think I destroyed his God.

Look up my comments.

You missed the possibility of divine thought NOT being processual, unlike human thought.

You reasoned on from that misunderstanding about what God means.

(so far I got neither another response from him, nor any answers in comment section of his youtube for the video).

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou Library
St Radegundis' day
13-VIII-2012

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRmKA5zUYBI

**http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yaw4q2xu58

***Thank you Owen Barfield (senior), thank you C S Lewis!

Not Myth, But Metamyth

Reading up on Zeitgeist The Movie, the Companion Guide, I can only conclude so far, that pagan parallels abound so much that Christianity is far beyond any Pagan myth. If it contains all of them, it transcends each of them. If it transcends each of them, it transcends all of them.

On Christmas you even missed one. The Theogony of Hesiod began with a shepherd seeing something curious. When God arranges the real Gony (birth) of the real Theos (God) - so to speak the real Theogony - he does not miss adressing an angelic message to angels.

And ex-pagan Luke does not miss recording it.

However, you are severely lacking in understanding of even myth. You cite one countryman of mine - a Professor Mettinger whom I met as ma took me on a day off from school and onto her unicersity lessons in Lund. He basically is into calling the Old Testament a Pagan or even Polytheistic Mythology washed more or less free from Polytheism by Pharisees. That day when I was thirteen I was shocked. And I am still not into that theory.

You say - whether citing or summarising his words - that Jonah according to basic logic cannot have happened and therefore is a myth. But the very important premiss that Jonah cannot in actuality have happened does not come from its likeness to myths like Gepetto and Pinocchio. Moral and good though they sometimes are. It comes from a philosophy denying all miraculous.

And such a philosophy is basically either atheist-materialist or pantheist. Neither polytheism nor theism (of which polytheism is not a variety, but which may be present or absent in polytheistic mythologies) could a priori deny miracles like that.

And that brings us to the fact that some Pagan myth is history. Whether Hercules really did the twelve works or not, he existed, he was a companion to Jason, his grandchildren became Spartan kings, he lived a generation before the Trojan War.

Æneas, ancestor or Julius Cæsar and possibly of another emperor too (if Japanese Sungodess in an attempt to render Venus Mater), lived in Troy and later in Italy.

However, most Pagan myth is either basically made up or so much distorted from the history as not to be a correct rendering of it.

Deucalion and Pyrrha are in a way Noah and his wife, but if I am right (playing "the Bible Babel game" the other way round as it were) also include a clear reference to Abraham and Sarah receiving three angels before the fertility miracle (which Greek myth refuses to render straight), and of two angels visiting Lot and his daughters and wife before saving them from Sodom (a destruction Deucalion myth merges into flood), and even one could ask if the end of eucalion myth is not a kind of reversal (artistic but hardly factually accurate) of what happened to Lot's wife when she looked back and became a pillar of salt.

Now if myths as in miracles do happen, I would get to the myth which contains most of them and the best miracles and those best verified to throw light on the others, not the other way round.

If Ficino thought of Plato as worshipping the Son of God of whom the visible Sun is but a feeble image, why can't you?

And, there is no doubt that the Gospels with the Old Testament and the Legenda Aurea beat even the Mahabharata, even in such a matter as quantity.

But Krishna's miracles are basically shown one man, Arjuna (who may have conquered Nod rather than an Indian Kingdom, since Krishna is said to have died in a year which occurred before the Flood), Christ's are shown openly before all of his followers and even his enemies to start with. Even the Resurrection does not quite miss Romans and High Priests, they haver to deal with the Empty Grave and do so with a clumsy lie.

And any comparison between a myth and the Gospel shows the Gospel clearer rooted in facts of even a humdrum nature.

• Krishna returns to life but his corpse is still burnt - Christ returns to life and his tomb is empty.
• Krishna is taken up into Heaven in the view of a poet - Christ is taken up into the clouds before eleven disciples.
• Attis is crucified - Christ is laid down on a cross to be crucified by nails hammered into his hands.
• Many gods had mothers claiming virginity due to a circumstance like not being a person or receiving virginity back or being a goddess and therefore invulnerable - Mary is a mortal woman and her virginity in maternity is a real miracle.
• The gods show diverse aspects of Christ between them - Christ shows all noble aspect of the gods. He is not a myth but the focus of all mythology.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou Library
St Philomena's Day 2012

Correcting Acharya on Christian Attitude to Pagan Myth

When we realize that the ancient, pre-Christian world was filled with stories about superhuman gods, goddesses and heroes of all cultures whose purported lives on Earth were replete with miracles of all manner, we must recognize that it is only by extraordinary human perseverance that one particular set of fabulous tales from one particular culture has become accepted as "true," while all the rest are deemed "myths."*

This is not excatly what happened. For centuries Christians continued to believe Hercules had lived and been very strong (probably killing monsters), denying only he was a son of Zeus. Debates have been made on whether demons are able to make children and how (pertinent if Hercules story is taken as otherwise true, or when it comes to Merlin), and St Thomas Aquinas basically attributed such births to "insemination by evil angelic gynecologist" as he thought angelic beings in themselves had no couilles or other production of semen.

Myth in antiquity did not primarily mean untruth, or made up story. It meant the story was told straight off with few details and no investigation referenced by saying "this source says so, others say so, I believe only this is possible ..." as the historians would do when telling a story.

What Christians came to believe in the North was not that Odin had never appeared or made apparent miracles to convince Swedes with their/his descendants in Norwegian Royalty too. What they came to believe, what we find in Snorre, is that Odin was a magician versed in black arts.

In short, Christianity did not teach men Paganism came exclusively from human fantasy, it taught them the devil had finger in it.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibl. Audoux, Paris
St Anne's day
26-VII-2012

*Truth be Known News, Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Is Jesus a Myth?

Acharya Gets the Therapeutae Wrong, Methinks

Acharya Post subject: Therapeuts and Ancient Usages of the Greek Word Therapeuo Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 2:25 pm	Eusebius, book II Chapter 17. Philo's Account of the Ascetics of Egypt.
Relevant passage from Acharya:	Relevant Passage from Eusebius:
First discussed in detail as a sect by Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, the Therapeuts were named by Eusebius in the 4th century as the early Christians whose "short allegorical works" served as the basis of the gospels.	11. They have also writings of ancient men, who were the founders of their sect, and who left many monuments of the allegorical method. These they use as models, and imitate their principles. 12. These things seem to have been stated by a man who had heard them expounding their sacred writings. But it is highly probable that the works of the ancients, which he says they had, were the Gospels and the writings of the apostles, and probably some expositions of the ancient prophets, such as are contained in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and in many others of Paul's Epistles. ...18. But if after these things any one still obstinately persists in denying the reference, let him renounce his incredulity and be convinced by yet more striking examples, which are to be found nowhere else than in the evangelical religion of the Christians.

Eusebius does not say that the Gospels which were probably writings of their ancients (meaning the synoptics were already in existance, if Eusebius is right) is the same as their monuments of the allegorical method, i e of exposing the Old Testament. If anything, the Epistle to the Hebrews would qualify as such a monument. But more likely it includes fuller lists of OT figures of Jesus and of Mary. Such as we find in Origen./HGL

Seing Miracles does not depend on Serotonin

About this article:

The God Chemical: Brain Chemistry And Mysticism
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104240746

Whatever the level of Serotonin, it will not cause hallucinating that a miracle (a resurrected dead or a healed theretofore lifelong invalid or longtime ailing or a sea parted in two with a people walking through) happened if it did not. The Church does not base its teaching on "mystic experiences" but rather evaluates such depending on its teaching. It bases its teaching on a tradition involving a series of miracles not ending to this day and linking back to Adam. Now, a tradition is something other than an experience, mystical or otherwise./HGL

This thing transmitted by Acharya S has no problem I would want to refute

I won't link to her since she used three sixes in the url. But I will link to her source, and give both the relevant Norwegian passage and her translation.

- Mye tyder på at folkene som bevisst tildekket gudehovet på Ranheim, tok med seg stolpene fra stavhuset, dessuten jord fra alteret til det sted de slo seg ned og reiste sitt nye gudehov. Fordi vårt funn og de norrøne kilder passer så godt sammen, må kildene være mer pålitelige enn mange forskere til nå har trodd, sier Rønne.

source:
Fant hedensk helligdom uten sidestykke
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Fant-hedensk-helligdom-uten-sidestykke-6727104.html#.T2b-c8iUCwE

"Indications are that the people who deliberately covered up the god temple at Ranheim took the posts from the stave house/pole building, in addition to the soil from the altar, to the place where they settled down and raised a new god temple. Because our findings and the Norse sources work well together, the sources may be more reliable than many scientists believed," said Rønne.

(from "Archaeologists unearth 'unparalleled' pre-Christian temple in Norway" on Freethoughtnation)

Now, part of her general case against Christianity is that sources in general are not very reliable, at least not when it comes to religious traditions. Part of my case is that this is not so. If Norse sources say that Odin appeared in Upsala and presented himself as the creator of Heaven and of Earth, and was adored as such and left a posterity behind in Upsala, I disbelieve, as a Christian exactly just one thing: that his claim was correct, that he deserved the adoration he got. The rest I find totally believable.

Indeed, if I believe Jesus Christ was the real creator of Heaven and of Earth (with the Father and the Holy Ghost, as Son and Word of the Father, before his incarnation in Nazareth after Annunciation) I must believe he was correct to show complete trust in Genesis. But if I belive Moses wrote Genesis, I must believe he was correct in trusting the geneaologies, between Adam and Noah, as well as the others. And if I belive that, I must believe there is generally a case for trustworthiness even in just orally preserved genealogies, if preserved systematically enough - including, obviously, the ones that link Odin to Harald Hairfair.

That Odin tried to pose as a god poses no more problem to believe than that Simon Magus tried to do so. That he succeeded and Simon Magus failed is because Simon Magus was forestalled by St Peter (who had fasted on a Saturday for the occasion).

So far from discrediting Christianity, this article in Norske Aftenposten credits it. Oh, Acharya's own article actually is not just a translation of Aftenposten journalist Cato Guhnfeldt. I will, then, not go into her conclusions for the occasion.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
La Clairière/Paris
19-III-2012, Feast of
St Joseph

Plagiarism charge

Miracles and the Book of Mormon (there is the word demon in the url, wonder why?):

Ruth Tucker is an evangelical Christian. In her excellent book, 'Another Gospel', (Zondervan,1989), she examines the beliefs of Mormons, Moonies, Jehovah's Witnesses etc. Here is what she says about the Book of Mormon.

"Many of the stories in the Book of Mormon were, as Fawn Brodie and many others have shown, borrowed from the Bible. The daughter of Jared, like Salome, danced before a king and decapitation followed. Aminadi, like Daniel, deciphered handwriting on a wall, and Alma was converted after the exact fashion of St. Paul. The daughters of the Lamanites were abducted like the dancing daughters of Shiloh; and Ammon, the American counterpart of David, for want of a Goliath slew six sheep-rustlers with his sling".

What could be more obvious and clear-cut?

Note here, the book of Mormon is supposed to be about other people than the ones in the Old Testament. A bit suspicious if all that ever happens to them has its exactest very prosaic parallels in the Old Testament.

Or take Chapter 2 Verse 249 of the Koran, which is about the first king of Israel, called Talut in the Koran.

So when Talut departed with the forces, he said: Surely Allah will try you with a river; whoever then drinks from it, he is not of me, and whoever does not taste of it, he is surely of me, except he who takes with his hand as much of it as fills the hand; but with the exception of a few of them they drank from it. So when he had crossed it, he and those who believed with him, they said: We have today no power against Jalut and his forces.

Christians will at once recognise this strange story about how God tested the army of the Israelites by making them drink from a river. It is found in Judges 7:4-7. Perhaps the details of other Biblical stories were also weaved together into this one story.

Here, please note, that if the Quraan is supposed to be about the same people as for instance Old and New Testaments, it is very fishy how many details differ - precisely as it is fishy when Miryam/Maryam sister of Moses is identified with Mary/Maryam, Mother of Jesus - or when Jesus has a name which corresponds closer to Esau than to Jesus. And Quraan is the younger testimony, the one very much further away in time from the events, meaning that the Old Testament account trumps the one of the Quraan. As does the Testimony of the New Testament.

Quraan is nearly six hundred years younger than Gospels - which were contemporary evidence or at least within a century. Quraan is also younger than Exodus etc. - which was also a contemporary evidence. There the factor is about two thousand years younger.

Here are two cases that are pretty different, but where the page does not go into details of that difference at all. Only the common denominator or "plagiarism" comes into account, and then, by parallel reasoning - the parallel does break down on a certain point, if we remember my analysis of the given items - they go on to:

Take the feeding of the 5,000.

In 2 Kings 4:42-44, Elisha has a great many people to feed with only a few loaves of bread and a little other food. He delegates the task of feeding. There is a complaint that the quantity is too small. The feeding continues and everyone is fed. There is surplus bread left over. This older story from Kings has exactly the same plot as the feeding of the 5,000 - only the numbers are different.

The feeding of the 5,000 is such an obvious rewrite of the story from Kings that if I remind you that Jesus used barley bread, you can guess what type of bread Elisha used.

On page 176 of the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, written by a raft of Catholic scholars, it says that 2 Kings 4:42-44 is 'obviously the inspiration for the NT multiplication miracles'. I like the word 'obviously'.

Difference from Quraan? Elisha and Jesus are supposed to be two different persons. They are two different pesons. The story about Jesus is not a garbled version of the story about Elisha, for every one of those Christians knew that Elisha had multiplied loaves before Our Lord.

Difference from Book of Mormon? That book only - with pretty few exceptions and those crucial to Mormonism, like a people of God in the Americas and Christ going there to peach (crucial as replacement of the Catholic Church, as inheritor of Christ's promise at end of Gospel of St Matthew), everything is a remake (often in prosaic detail) of an Old Testament story, but it is improbable - I have not read it - that Mormon's Book exhausts the riches of the Old testament. In Jesus' case, everything in the Old Testament is indeed somehow or other related to Jesus, but not only that, lots of Pagan mythologies and some philosophies too are so.

Elisha multiplied loaves of bread once and Christ did so twice. Elijah raised a widow's boy child from the dead and so did Jesus (from the same region, I seem to recall too). Now, multiplying loaves and raising dead are pretty exact parallels, but there is nothing prosaic about them.

Joseph and Daniel were thrown into miserable prisons and raised out of them - the one mainly to save from starvation, the other to witness to truth. But Christ was not only down in a pit, he was down in Sheôl - and he raised himself as opposed to being let out by his judges. And Pilate and Kaiphas were both far more evil than either Potiphar or Nebuchadnessar. Indeed, Potiphar's wife was Potiphar's excuse, since he listened to her. Pilate's wife could have been Pilate's rescue from evil-doing - if he had dared listen to her. Here there is indeed a parallel, even exactitude in the parallel, but not prosaic sameness, rather opposition: Christ was up against far greater odds than ever Daniel or Joseph. And it was the Holy Land that became by that Deicide a land parallel to the exile lands of Egypt and Babylon.

That there are Pagan parallels is commonplace. I would say that every Pagan myth in some sense touches either the mystery of Christ or the mystery of Antichrist - except when it is as garbled a version of Old Testament story as the Quraan. Deucalion and Pyrrha - as I have noted elsewhere - is a myth telescoping the Flood, the destruction of Sodom, the visit of the angels to Lot and to Abraham and Sarah before Lot. Plus a sentence or two from Creation account and account of the fall. Much as the Quraan is quite capable of telescoping Our Lord's family with Moses' family. Just a few thousand years between them. But there are Pagan myths that are not like that. And some show us Antichrist, some show us Christ. And these are history from the Pagan countries - though sometimes garbled history.

Osiris has been taken a model for resurrection. Sadly enough a resurrection incomplete and magically made by his wife Isis. St Mary, unlike Isis, had no divine powers to raise her Son with, it was the Son who was divine and raised himself.

Krishna has been taken as model for Ascension, by none less than Acharya Sanning. Yeah, right: his soul ascends to Heaven, as shown to a poet, in a dream ... yawn (literally, but that is lack of sleep too, I sleep in places where I am woken up too early). Nothing like Our Lord Resurrecting first and then showing himself as resurrected, not just to close family like Horus, but to 11 and some women and two and five hundred and ... then Rising up to Heaven before their very eyes.

No, the Plagiarism charge will not stick. Plagiarise one source, it is Plagiarism. Plagiarise two, it is Compilation. Plagiarise three or more, it is Original Work. Especially as the supposed Plagiarism is witness accounts.

Now, if 607 verses in St Mark are identical to 607 verses in St Matthew, then maybe St Matthew plagiarised St Mark, as this page says, but then again, maybe St Mark based his one on two eyewitness accounts: St Matthew whom he could read and St Peter whom he could listen to. And some are coincidence, because saying the same things in different words is not easy if both stick to simple words as much as possible. This is of course what we Christians believe to be the case.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Versailles
10-XI-2011

Laws of nature

Evidence^*) can be deduced for or against the occurrence of specific events, but such evidence *relies* on general laws. That is because the whole theoretical model of scientific explanation rests on the idea that *every* particular event is subsumed under general rules. We test the rules by reference to the data, which in turn are comprised of specific events.

That brings us back to the guy who without looking at registers assumes he has 32 different persons as grandfather's grandfather's father and so on up to grandmother's grandmother's mother. He is subsuming the specific event under the general rule, but he is stating the general rule sloppily. Just because - being sufficiently distantb from first men - he has to have a grandfather's grandfather's father (or rather eight, but one of them a father's father's father's father's father) as well as a grandmother's grandmother's father (eight, one of them a mother's mother's mother's mother's father) he cannot really know, but he thought he knew, that they were two different persons.

In Western Larger Cities, having 28 - 32 different persons in that generation is not at all uncommon, due to avoiding of close relatives. I think that excepting Jews and Gipsies, who avoid cousin marriages less, as well as recent Near East Immigration, 28 - 32 different people is more common than anywhere between 4 - 26, whereas 2 would be outstanding: in order to have only two of them, one would have to be either five generations after Adam and Eve, or five generations on an isolated island which started out with a single couple like Adam and Eve.

Now, as said earlier: if a man who was really fifth from Adam and Eve (but living away from them, in Nod East of Eden, and so not seeing them) were to extrapolate from the fact that as everyone has two parents, every parent is someone who has two parents, and so on, and conclude that he had 32 different persons five generations back rather than Adam and Eve having sixteen ancestor roles each, would be getting the general rule wrong, because he tried to formulate the general rule before discounting evidence because it conflicted with the general rule.

So, just for example, we can't "test" the hypothesis that the sun went down on July 28, 50000 BC. It's an event, not an explanation. But if someone asked what evidence we have for the truth of the proposition, we could only appeal to the observably law-governed motion of the planet, and the absence of any well-attested discontinuity.

A Christian can reply: it did not set back then, because that year did not exist. God created Heaven and Earth, I will not say later than then, because that gives a false view of God's eternity before creating, if I got St Thomas Aquinas right, but more recently. I will also reply that discontinuities are attested:

• a) 24 h standstill in Joshua's times;
  
• b) one King of Judah asking a prophet to make the sun go backwards two measures on the sun watch (probable limit between equinox Taurus and equinox Pisces if only sun, but neither moon nor fixed stars went back);
  
• c) one of those probably equals the exaggerated account of Greeks of Sun rising in the West and setting in the East, when Thyestes made Atreus eat his own sons;
  
• d) the two occasions are confirmed losely also by Egyptian astronomers who reported four irregularities for the last ten thousand years (=more than the world existed, thus Egyptians have deliberately misdated to make their culture and knowledge look older than it is).

As for sources neither Jewish, Greek or Egyptian, their records do not reach uninterruptedly as far back as that. As far laws, the one who claims that the Sun obeying Joshua is impossible is very like a man who claims it is impossible that potato cut into pieces can take half an hour to boil soft, from when water starts boiling, because he knows it takes ten minutes at sea level (twenty for big uncut potatoes) and he has never been at Titicaca. Saying there is neither any God nor any angel who can do what bodily creatures cannot, is misstating the laws of nature. And, as in water boiling at 100°C, misstating in such a way that one can live very long without seing the mistake corrected.

I'd prefer not to distinguish between facts and laws, since laws (at least in the framework I'm supposing) are just a certain type of general fact. But, obviously, they're quite different from reports of specific events. To confuse those two sorts of things is just very sloppy.

Precisely: laws are general facts and need scientific explanation and repetated universal or next-to-universal attestation. Specific events are not general and need attestation.

If frequency of attestation is the rule by which we go in accepting or rejecting not so probable events, miracles are in as good a position as plagues or wars - or even better.

If rejection of the supernatural is your rule, because acceptance of the supernatural would in your eyes make the general principle you enounced harder or - though that is just your take - impossible to apply, then you are no longer in a position of inquiring about whether miracles occur, but in the position of one rejecting them. On a certain principle.

Quite obviously, we Christians would not be sharing that principle. So, either the principle is not self evident, or we are unusually stupid for not grasping a self evident principle. Indeed, seeing that atheist materialists are such a clear minority of the World Population, most of the world would be unusually stupid and only a minority sane as usual - but then that "sane as usual" would no longer be "as usual" but rather exceptional. So, where does your principled superiority over the rest of humanity come from? A good question to ask before bowing down to you wisdom, I should think.

It does not come from the logic of your mate who - after reading my previous post here - asks "what sober witness would state that dead men walked" about St Matthew, as if that were a self-evident principle between both parties, and on top of it misses that the one Apostle to be certain eyewitness to the Crucifixion is also the one who reports that blood and water came from Christ's side when St Longinus pierced Our Lord's side with his lance. Nor from his confusion about "not stating same things" as if it were tantamount to stating contradictory things.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Versailles
10-XI-2011
^*)On the thread under http://o-x.fr/h114 these arguments came up.

Challenge on Gospels.

I was saying on P Z Myers' blog comments that eywitness accounts trump reconstruction. That fuelled a challenge about eywitness accounts as such.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/11/theologians_dont_get_to_slithe.php
http://o-x.fr/h114

None of the gospels were written by eyewitnesses.

Two were, St Matthew (not present on Crucufixion) and St John (present on Crucifixion). The other two had access to eyewitness accounts.

They don't agree on what Jesus's last words were.

Last on Cross? There were seven in total, spread through the four Gospels. First two include and latter two omit the Psalm quote in Hebrew with Aramaic adress to God and spoonerism in the verb, antepenultime word. Other inclusions and omissions are there for other words among the seven, like only St John giving us "woman, see thy son" and "see thy mother" - impossible for him to miss for obvious personal reasons.

St John: Jesus therefore, when he had taken the vinegar, said: It is consummated. And bowing his head, he gave up the ghost. St Luke: And Jesus crying out with a loud voice, said: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. And saying this, he gave up the ghost. St Mark: And Jesus having cried out with a loud voice, gave up the ghost.=St Matthew: And Jesus again crying with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.

The two that give us psalm 22 before vinegar omit the following two words only giving is the fact that one of them was cried out load and one followed by death, of which the one on consummation is immediately after vinegar and the one on the Father's hands immediately before the giving up of his ghost.

They don't agree on what happened when Jesus allegedly died.

St Matthew: [51] And behold the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top even to the bottom, and the earth quaked, and the rocks were rent. [52] And the graves were opened: and many bodies of the saints that had slept arose, [53] And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, came into the holy city, and appeared to many. [54] Now the centurion and they that were with him watching Jesus, having seen the earthquake, and the things that were done, were sore afraid, saying: Indeed this was the Son of God. St Mark: [38] And the veil of the temple was rent in two, from the top to the bottom. [39] And the centurion who stood over against him, seeing that crying out in this manner he had given up the ghost, said: Indeed this man was the son of God. St Luke: [47] Now the centurion, seeing what was done, glorified God, saying: Indeed this was a just man. St John: [31] Then the Jews, (because it was the parasceve,) that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath day, (for that was a great sabbath day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. [32] The soldiers therefore came; and they broke the legs of the first, and of the other that was crucified with him. [33] But after they were come to Jesus, when they saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. [34] But one of the soldiers with a spear opened his side, and immediately there came out blood and water. [35] And he that saw it, hath given testimony, and his testimony is true. And he knoweth that he saith true; that you also may believe.

Sts Matthew, Mark, Luke are shorter and shorter, St John gives a different line of events without contradicting the one given by St Matthew.

They don't agree on the location of his tomb.

Only St John gives location. The apparent contradiction is only there if a) Pilate was away from that place, in his palace, and b) he also gave the body as present before him, but c) either he was away and only ordered the body to be given or he was there if the body was before him.

They don't agree on how he was prepared for burial.

St Matthew: [59] And Joseph taking the body, wrapped it up in a clean linen cloth. [60] And laid it in his own new monument, which he had hewed out in a rock. And he rolled a great stone to the door of the monument, and went his way. [61] And there was there Mary Magdalen, and the other Mary sitting over against the sepulchre. St Mark: [46] And Joseph buying fine linen, and taking him down, wrapped him up in the fine linen, and laid him in a sepulchre which was hewed out of a rock. And he rolled a stone to the door of the sepulchre. [47] And Mary Magdalen, and Mary the mother of Joseph, beheld where he was laid. St Luke: [53] And taking him down, he wrapped him in fine linen, and laid him in a sepulchre that was hewed in stone, wherein never yet any man had been laid. [54] And it was the day of the Parasceve, and the sabbath drew on. [55] And the women that were come with him from Galilee, following after, saw the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. [56] And returning, they prepared spices and ointments; and on the sabbath day they rested, according to the commandment. St John: [38] And after these things, Joseph of Arimathea (because he was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews) besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus. And Pilate gave leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus. [39] And Nicodemus also came, (he who at the first came to Jesus by night,) bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. [40] They took therefore the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths, with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury. [41] Now there was in the place where he was crucified, a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein no man yet had been laid. [42] There, therefore, because of the parasceve of the Jews, they laid Jesus, because the sepulchre was nigh at hand.

St John is the one who tells us that Nicodemus brought the spices, but that is no contradiction to the myrrhophores thinking they have to supply spices. None says that the myrrhophores saw the whole process.

They don't agree on who or how many found the alleged empty tomb, who was there when they found it, and what happened afterward.

Since more than one finding of the empty tomb was done, it is no inconvenience if one sees the angels and another not. They have had time to move about.

They don't agree on when and where Jesus allegedly reappeared, and what happened after that.

There were more appearances than one, hence the same solution as to previous.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
George Pompidou Library
of Paris
Sunday the 6 of October Nov.
YooL 2011