Six Indian
Priests
by Peter Myers, September 23, 2018
Newsletter published on September 23, 2018
This material is at http://mailstar.net/Six-Indian-Priests.doc
Since moving to Childers, Qld, in 2005, I joined Rare Fruit
Australia and developed an orchard of subtropical and tropical trees on my 3500
m2 block.
Last summer and autumn, I had a surplus of Jakfruits, and,
because I hate waste, was giving them away to anyone I could find who wanted
one.
I knew that the local Catholic priest was from India, so took
a couple of Jakfruits in to the presbytery. Thus began an interestiing
friendship.
Fr Sunny Mathew came out and got some more, and later his
friends from Brisbane came too. On the latter occasion, we had six priests from
India at our table. My Filipino wife served them slices of Dragon Fruit, pieces
of crunchy Jakfruit, and Cassava cake.
They loved the Dragon Fruit and the Jakfruit. I knew then
that we had some of the best Jakfruits around. Then we went out into the
orchard, and picked 10 Jakfruits, mostly green ones for cooking, which they took
home to process.
A photo of three of them processing our green Jakfruits is at
http://mailstar.net/Indian-priests-Jakfruit.jpg
These priests are all from Kerala, at the south-west tip of
India, the Malabar Coast. They are Thomas Christians, and belong to the
Syro-Malabar Catholic Church:
Within that church, they belong to a religious order called
Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (CMI):
St. Thomas the apostle, known as "doubting Thomas", is said
to have travelled across the ocean to the west coast of India, and established
the church there. Ocean travel between the Roman Empire and India is well
attested at that time, 2000 years ago or so; Pliny wrote about it in his Natural
History, Book VI.
The priests had been in Australia for six years, but had been
unable to find Jakfruits, their favourite fruit. That's why they thought nothing
of travelling from Brisbane to get some.
Jakfruits are the biggest fruit in the world. There are two
kinds, crunchy and soft; crunchy are by far the better kind for eating raw, when
ripe, but either kind can be cooked, if picked green and immature. The green
ones are used in curries, and in a delicious (cooked) Jakfruit salad.
Apart from Jakfruits, they are particularly fond of green
Pawpaws (Papaya). These, like green Jakfruits, are cooked in various recipes,
including a delicious salad. Australians of Anglo-Irish heritage are gradually
learning to appreciate tropical fruits from migrants used to them.
They were interested to see my orchard, and were impressed at
my library; it's one of the largest private libraries around, and the more
surprising because it's in a remote area, in the bush. I had no choice but to
accumulate such a library, because I'm far from big cities.
Fr Sunny recently attended my 70th birthday party. He turned
up in black, and dog-collar. I asked him to say Grace; he told the assembled
guests, "I'm here because of Jakfruits".
I told Fr. Sunny how I used to be in a Catholic seminary
myself. My class of 1966 was the biggest ever, but the cultural changes of which
the Beatles and the 1968 student rebellion were emblematic led to most leaving,
including me.
The seminary walls were not sufficient to keep those changes
out; I remember one student who was particularly taken with Sergeant Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The cover of that album featured many faces chosen by John
Lennon, including Aleister Crowley, the sorceror. Lennon included Crowley
because of his motto, "Do What Thou Wilt":
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/occult-figures-20130912-2tla9.html
That article adds,
"But the occultic references do not stop there as many Masonic persons appear on the cover
such as Aldous Huxley and H G Wells. According to Trabant, there are 11 such
Masonic cues on the sleeve."
Lennon advocated a
borderless world:
Imagine there's no countries {world government}
And no religion too {i.e. official Atheism - suppression of
religion}
Living life in peace... {peace = world government}
And the world will be as one {world government}
Imagine no possessions {communism; but John was a
millionaire}
Sharing all the world... {open borders, one world government}
You may say I'm a dreamer {your son Julian certainly thought
so}
But I'm not the only one {a whole generation has been led
astray}
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one {world government}
The Church in the West never came to terms with the Culture War emanating from such
sources; it was not recognised as a
form of Communism - True (Trotskyist) Communism, not the Stalinist variety.
But eventually, Fidel Castro realised
his error, and erected a statue of Lennon in Havana: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/john-lennon-statue
Westerners lost their bearings, and left the churches. But
the decline in the West was not matched in the Second and Third Worlds. Priests
from Poland were sent to the West in the 1990s, to make up for the shortfall,
and now the Thomas Christians of India are filling the breach.
Similarly in the Anglican Church, where African Christians
have held the line against Gay Marriage.
Next week, insha'Allah (God Willing, in Arabic - as Cyril
Glasse tells me I should say when announcing a future event; Cyril, of Jewish
background, is an expert on the Manichean religion and on Islam), I will be in
Luxor, Egypt, to see the sights of Ancient Egypt.
The temples of Luxor (Thebes) have been called "the biggest
open-air museum in the world". I will be hiring a bicycle to see the West Bank,
armed with the guide-book of Kent Weeks.
In the Temple of Luxor, I will also be looking for a Coptic
church which was built over part of the earlier ruins. The Catholics who
conquered Mexico and Peru also liked to build churches over Aztec and Inca
temples. It was a kind of one-upmanship, a put-down of the previous culture, but
also an acknowledgement that the site is truly a sacred one.
But the Temple of Luxor was so big that the Coptic church
could only cover a small portion of it.
I will also be looking out for a Mosque, which was built over
part of the Coptic church when the Moslems took over.
So within that one site I will see a summary of the last 5000
years of religious history.
H. V. Morton was one of the first great travel writers. He
wrote three books on the world from which Christianity emerged: In the Steps of
the Master, In the Steps of St. Paul, and Through Lands Of The Bible.
The last-mentioned of those books, published in 1938, covers
Egypt, Syria, and related areas. In a striking comment relevant to my journey,
he observes:
"The ancient
Egyptians whom we know so well were gay, laughter-loving people, who liked
the easy, comfortable things of life. We
can see them depicted in the tombs, sitting in the shade of their vines, listening to music, and watching
dancers; or grouped round the festive table, drinking, sometimes too
much, and eating large quantities of delicious food. Then the curtain falls on them. We see
nothing for a time but Greeks and
Jews in Alexandria. The curtain rises on the Egyptians again-but is it
possible that these are the descendants of the old Egyptians? It is a most remarkable transformation. Here is a
nation in sack-cloth and ashes. Here are half-naked hermits lifting emaciated arms
to God in the lonely places of the land. Here are thousands of men and women vowed to poverty and
hardship. Here is a nation striving to stamp out all the desires of the body in
order that the soul may rise triumphant. Such is the Egypt of the Desert Fathers." (p.
224)
Christian monasticism developed from the Anchorite monks of
Coptic Egypt, who set up in the deserts in the fourth century; after the split
with Rome, they were part of the Orthodox church, and still have similarites
with the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches.
Morton visited ancient Coptic monasteries in the western
deserts of Egypt, which were still operating; and also the Monastery of St
Catherine in the desert of Sinai, which is still one of the most important sites
in the Orthodox world, and a World Heritage site too.
The early Irish church had many differences from the Roman
church; Morton traces Irish monasticism to influences from Coptic monasticism in
Egypt. European Christians used to make pilgrimages to Coptic sites.
In the sites of Luxor, I will also be looking for traces of
Akhenaten's influence. He was the Gorbachev of the Ancient World, the man who
undid the established cult in favour of one he judged more univeralist. I have
often wondered if Pope John XXIII was the Akhenaten of the Catholic Church.
Sigmund Freud claimed that Moses was an Egyptian. His name is
Egyptian, as per the names of pharaohs Ahmose, Thutmose (I, II and III), and
Ramesses (I to 11), and Amenmesse.
Freud also claimed that Jewish Monotheism is derived from
Akhnaton. In his book Moses and Monotheism, he wrote:
"The Jewish people
had abandoned the Aton religion which Moses had given them and had turned to the worship of another god {i.e.
Yahweh/Jehovah} who differed little from the Baalim of the neighbouring
tribes. All the efforts of later distorting influences failed to hide this humiliating fact." (p. 87)
"{p. 38} the Jewish tribes ... {p. 39} later ... took over the worship of a god Jahve,
probably from the Arabic tribe of Midianites ... Jahve was certainly a volcano-god ... {p. 41} the demon
Jahve on his {p. 42} divine mountain."
"Jahve was quite unlike the Mosaic God. Aton had been a pacifist, like his deputy
on earth or rather his model the Pharaoh Ikhnaton ... For a people that was preparing to conquer new lands by violence Jahve was
certainly better suited. ... the central fact of the development of Jewish religion was this: in the course of time Jahve lost his own
character and became more and more like the old God of Moses, Aton." (p. 78)
http://mailstar.net/moses.html
Ahmed Osman, a maverick writer in the vein of Immanuel
Velikovsky, claimed, in his book Moses: Pharaoh of Egypt, that Moses was none
other than Pharaoh Akhenaten himself.
Such writers, while incorporating some wacky ideas, also
probably articulate some truths.
Archaeologists such as Israel Finkelstein, and Egyptologists
such as Donald B. Redford , acknowledge that the Exodus described in the Bible
never happened. Not only was there no Exodus, but there was no Joshua-led
invasion of Palestine. At the time, Palestine and Canaan were vassal states of
Egypt, part of the Egyptian Empire, at the height of its power, whose northern
border met the Hittite Empire:
The Exodus story was concocted by Jewish exiles in Babylon,
to provide a historical precedent for the Return to Palestine - the first
Zionism. Those Jewish exiles copied the idea from the Zoroastrian religion,
which was the first to incorporate the concept of a Messiah (Saoshyant,
Savior).
The Bible even calls Cyrus, the Persian Emperor who
authorised that return, a "messiah" himself; even though he was a Zoroastrian,
not a Jew.
But what we know as Judaism actually began there in Babylon,
under the influence of the Zoroastrian religion.
Arnold J. Toynbee, the greatest scholar produced by the
Rhodes / Round Table movement, wrote:
"Judaism is a
development of the Pre-Exilic religion of Judah that was created in and by the Babylonian
diaspora and was imposed by it
on the Jewish population in Judaea.
... There has also been the aim of converting the gentile world to the
worship of Yahweh under the aegis of a
world-empire centred on Eretz Israel
and ruled by 'the Lord's Anointed': a coming human king of Davidic lineage."
(Reconsiderations, p. 486).
And "It needed the
subsequent missions of Nehemiah and Ezra, backed by the Achaemenian Imperial
Government's authority, to make them
ruefully conform to the new
ideals of monotheism" (p. 429).
Toynbee also says that before Ezra (and Persian influence
during the Babylon exile), Judaism was
polytheistic: http://mailstar.net/toynbee.html
Toynbee thus agrees on the pivotal role of the First Persian
Empire in the formation of Judaism, but, despite his encyclopedic knowledge, did
not comprehend the influence Zoroastrianism, as the religion of that
empire, had on Judaism:
Mary Boyce has since articulated that influence; what Toynbee sees as Jewish Universalism
was largly borrowed from Zoroastrian concepts. For example Boyce writes, "The particular Gatha which provides striking parallels for
Second Isaiah is Yasna 44" (A History of Zoroastrianism, Volmue 2, p. 46);
Second Isaiah being what Toynbee calls
Deutero Isaiah.
The Archangels Michael, Raphael et. al., which I grew up
with, as with all Jews, Christians and Moslems, come straight from
Zoroastrianism.
The concept of a cosmic battle between a good god (Mazda,
Light) and a bad god (Ahriman, Angra Mainyu, The Devil, The Lie, Darkness) also
comes from Zoroastrianism.
Inscriptions of the Persian Emperors do not refer to the good
god (Mazda, i.e. Light as in the Mazda brand of light-bulbs), but they refer to
the evil force as "The Lie", and commit themselves to the struggle against
it.
Norman Cohn, the Jewish scholar, acknowledged the derivation
of much of Judaism from Zoroastrianism, in his book Cosmos, Chaos and the World
to Come: http://mailstar.net/zoroastrianism.html.
There were two versions of Zoroastrianism. Orthodox
Zoroastrianism postulated a dualism (God, Devil) that had existed forever.
Zurvanism, a heterodox version, was monistic. Cohn notes:
"For if originally Angra Mainyu had been imagined as coeval
with the supreme god, and almost his
equal, he had ceased to be so in the version of Zoroastrianism known in the West
in Hellenistic times, Zurvanism. That heterodoxy seems to have evolved under the late Achaemenians in
their western lands, notably Babylonia, and to have been adopted by those
monarchs as orthodox. Zurvanism was a
monism: it postulated a high god, Zurvan (meaning 'Time'), who created both
Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu. Such a doctrine could be more easily harmonised with Jewish belief than
could the original Zoroastrianism. In the apocalypses and the Qumran writings
the Devil is likewise a creature of God and subject to him. The Community Rule
of the Qumran community, for instance, tells how the spirits of truth and falsehood, of
light and darkness, compete for mastery
over human beings - but God is above them both." (p. 221)
One of the reasons I left the seminary was that I stopped
believing in the Devil. I could not believe in the dualistic version, that the
evil god had coexisted eternally aligside the good god. But the monistic version
also did not make sense to be, because if the high god had created the Devil,
that high god must have known what the Devil would do.
I still believe that there are evil beings, but not
transcendant evil. I have experienced witchcraft, i.e. on the receiving end. But
also telepathy and clairvoyance, on rare occasions. Other people report seances
where secrets were disclosed that no-one would know other than the subject. I am
inclined to the view that there is another dimension, apart from the material
one; but that although we have glimpses of it - which are the source of all
religion - we cannot know much about it. Therefore I think that all religions
are right, and all are wrong. All the same, we can't live without a religion or
a religious philosophy; thoe who do, flounder around.
When Jewish Fundamentalists recently announced the birth of a
Red Heifer, as a prelude to the Third Temple and the Messiah, they did not
realise the Zoroastrian connection.
The ashes of the animal "are placed in a vessel containing
spring water to purify a person who has become ritually contaminated by contact
with a corpse":
That corpses are polluting, causing ritual uncleaness, was a
central tenet of the Zoroastrian religion. Much of the Jewish Purity code comes
from Zoroastrianism. The word "Pharisee" is derived from "Parsee", meaning
"Zoroastrian".
Zoroastrians practise Sky Burial - exposing a corpse in a
remote area, to let vultures and wild dogs eat it - to get rid of this
pollution.
In the Gospel story of the Three Wise Men from the East,
following a star to the stable in Bethelehem in which the child Jesus lay, the
Three Wise Men are Zoroastrian priests, and they are thereby affirming that the
child is indeed the Saoshyant (Savior, Messiah) predicted in that religion.
Even though the Jewish and Christian religions both draw on
the same scriptures, they have markedly different concepts of Redemption.
Redemption relates to some sort of Fall or catastrophe in the
past, which inaugurated a period of suffering and evil; but after the Redemption
comes a return to the original paradise. (NB 'Paradise' is a Persian word).
In the Jewish religion, the Fall is the destruction of the
ancient states of Israel and Judah at the hands of the Assyrian and Babylonian
Empires.
Israel-Judah were vassal states in the borderlands between
the Egyptian and Assyrian Empires; they were torn between the two. In the end,
they were destroyed because they declined to pay the taxes, and follow the
dictates, that the Assyrian Emperor demanded; it was not an ideological matter.
The Emperor moved the leaders of the rebellion to Babylon, and moved other
rebelious groups from elsewhere in the empire to Palestine. That was standard
practice at the time; Stalin did the same.
Those transferred to Babylon enjoyed life in the New York of
its day; they did not want to return. That's where the Jewish religion was
formed, and also where Jews learned the art of money-lending. Interest-bearing
loans began in Babylonia, but were unknown in Egypt. Deuteronomy 15:6 says "you
will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow; you will rule over many
nations, but they will not rule over you".
But debt-forgiveness also began in Babylonia, via the Jubilee
Year, as economist and archaeologist Michael Hudson has shown. The Hebrew
Calendar, used in Israel today, is actually the Babylonian Calendar.
If the exile in Babylon was the Fall, in Judaism, Salvation
or Redemption is the Return to Palestine, i.e. Zionism. They believe that they
will rule the world from Jerusalem.
If you ask Christians about the Fall, the first answer they
will give you relates to the story of Adam and Eve, i.e. Original Sin in the
Garden of Eden. It doesn't really make much sense. The original couple disobey a
command, eating a fruit. Their eyes are opened to the reality of Good and Evil.
They are punished, and all their descendants, forever. God lied, because he
said, "you will surely die", but they did not.
What that part really means is that, up that point, there was
no death: they were eternal beings, immortals. But after their sin, death, birth
and marriage (mating) were the lot of humanity. This story is derived from the
Epic of Gilgamesh, the epic story known all over the ancient world from Minoan
Crete to Babylonia.
The moral of the story is that Sex and Death go
together.Through having sex, we give birth to children. As they grow up, the
older generation must die off, to make room for new generations. If they did
not, the earth
would become over-populated: http://mailstar.net/adam-and-eve.html
But the Bible also gives glimpses of another version of the
Fall: a rebellion in Heaven by the Fallen Angels, i.e. the Devil and his
cohorts.
This is the Zoroastrian version of the Fall - and the
original version, preserved in the Book of Enoch. It is one of the main books
found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and was very influential on early Christianity.
But it was later suppressed, deemed non-canonical, and only a few references to
Enoch survive in the Bible (e.g. Genesis 4 & 5, Heb 11.5, Jude 0.14)
This version has nothing to do with Sex. The Zoroastrian
religion, like Islam, regards sex as good, and celibacy as unnatural. Judaism
also takes that view; the Jews who thought otherise were the faction who evolved
into Christianity.
Permanent celibacy, as a lifestyle, came from India. It
developed first in the Jain religion and the Upanishad movement, about 800 BC.
Buddhism touted itself as a less extreme version, the "Middle Way". In 2008 I
visited Bodhgaya, where Buddha gained enlightenment, and the Jain community of
Sonaghir, where I met a naked Jain monk: http://mailstar.net/india-pakistan.html
India is the country where Sex and Celibacy go together. I
also visited the two Sex temples which are UNESCO sites: The Temple of Surya the
Sun-god at Konark, and Khajuraho temple, which is the second-most-visited site
in India after the Taj Mahal.
At Khajuraho there is also a beautiful Jain temple with a
nude statue of the founder, Mahavira. One can only marvel at the extremes of
renunciation he went to. Mahavira is always depicted nude, with pendant penis,
unlike Siva. A plaque at the temple presents Mahavira's teachings, c. 500BC:
"There is no separate existence of God. Everybody can attain
Godhood by making supreme efforts in the right direction.
"Know thyself; recognize thyself; be immersed in thyself -
you will attain Godhood.
"One, who, even after knowing the whole universe can remain
unaffected and unattached is God."
The Jain religion is atheistic, like Buddhism. It sees all
living beings as souls, the human being no more valuable than the non-human.
Therefore, no living being, even a mosquito, can be
killed. When tilling the land, one should wear a mask to avoid inhaling (and
inadvertently killing) insects. However, Jains are urban people; they do not
till the land.
Alexander the Great brought back Jain monks from India to
Greece; they were considered philosophers, and known as GymnoSophists. The
earliest Cynic philosophers had similarities.
The naked Jain monks at Sonagir eat and drink only once a
day. After a life of austerity, a new Jain temple is built when each monk dies.
In their teaching, a monk who survives such a life becomes a god, small g; they
don't believe there's a big-g God. There were about 120 beautiful Jain temples
at Sonagir when I visited in 2008.
Arthur Schopenhauer saw Christianity as merging cultural
streams from Judaism and from India. Celibacy and self-denial came from India,
via the Pythagoreans, the Therapeutae (of Egypt) and the Essenes:
Indian scholars familiar with Sanskrit attest influence from
India on the formation of Christianity. Notable authors are Zacharias P. Thundy
(Buddha and Christ: Nativity Stories and Indian Traditions), and Michael
Lockwood (Buddhism's Relation to Christianity). The most comprehensive book on
the mutual influences between India and Greece in the ancient world is Thomas C.
Mc Evilley's book The Shape Of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies In Greek And
Indian Philosophies.
India is a popular destination for tourists from Israel.
There are many countries where they don't feel welcome, but they love India,
regardless of its polytheism. Yet the Bible depicts polytheism as evil. India
preserves religions akin to those of ancient Egypt.
I asked Fr. Sunny about that: do the Thomas Christians regard
Siva, and the other gods of Hinduism, as evil? No they don't, he replied. I
asked Fr. Sunny, "What is your caste?"; most Indians admit to having one. But he
replied that once an Indian coverts to the Church, he no longer has a caste. His
ancestors had converted long ago, and since that time had no a caste.
Long before Schopenhauer, Marcion had declared that
Christianity was a completely different religion from Judaism. He sought a
Christianity without the Old Testament. To isolate and refute Marcion, the
Church formulated the Canon of revealed books for the first time.
Barbara Thiering pondered the similarities between the Qumran
sect and the early Christians:
"It soon became apparent to those studying the scrolls that the writers were similar in many ways to the early followers
of Jesus Christ. ... For instance, the two groups, the Qumran Sect and early
Christians, lived in the same small area at about the same time. Both met every day for a sacred meal of bread
and wine to which only initiates were admitted. Both practised community sharing of property, a most
unusual practice for Jews. Both valued
celibacy, the Qumran sect very strongly, the Christians moderately. Both
used baptism as a method of
initiation, and both looked forward to a coming apocalyptic crisis which would usher in a
new messianic age. They used the
same names for themselves: both called
themselves "the Way", "the New Covenant", "the Sons of Light". Both had a
branch in Damascus, again using the name "the Way". They were governed by bishops, who had similar
functions in both cases. Each lived in expectation of a New Jerusalem, with an
identical architectural plan: foursquare, with three gates on each side, for the
twelve tribes. They have numerous terms in common, with closely parallel
passages in both sets of literature." (Jesus the Man, p. 9).
But she also notes differences:
"The main emphasis of the scholarly literature was on the
differences between the scrolls and early Christian literature, which are
certainly considerable. The tone is entirely different (except perhaps for the
New Testament book of Revelationn,
which would have been very much at home
at Qumran). The scrolls are
legalistic, obsessive about ritual cleanliness, harshly exclusive. According
to the Temple Scroll, for example, a number of categories of persons were not to
be allowed into the presence of God: a man who had had a noctural emission, a man who had
recently had sexual intercourse; lepers;
menstruating women. No blind man was to be allowed into the sanctuary for
the whole of his life, because this would profane the city where God dwelt. By
contrast, in the gospels, Jesus touched
lepers, associated with the blind and the maimed, was in close contact with
married men, with gentiles, and with
women." (p. 10)
She concludes: "Yet the differences ought not to be used to
negate the similarities ..." (p. 10).
It would seem that the Qumran community evolved into the
early Christians; but how and why are unknown.
One of the reasons that Akhenaten's religion died out after
him, is that he did not establish a priesthood. He and Nefertiti are depicted as worshipping
the sun disk, both as life-giver in an ecological sense, and also as abstract
symbol of divinity, but only a priesthood could have continued the cult after
them.
His changes were a rejection of the religion of Osiris, who
had been a king, a lawgiver who made the people give up human sacrifice, a
mortal man who, after death, was made a god. The Christian Church later depicted
Christ in the same way, and used the Osiris-Isis-Horus trinity as a model for
the Christian trinity.
Osiris, like Christ, was the first human to overcame Death;
and he then attained an Afterlife. He became the Judge of the Dead. Every dead
person had to undergo Judgment, passing then either to Afterlife (Resurrection
in a bodily sense - that's why their tombs were packed with things they would
need) or to Oblivion (their heart being eaten by the crocodile-god).
In the Judgment, the deceased's heart was weighed, to test it
for sins. If it was as light as a feather, it passed. I will be seeing artwork
depicted this Judgment in Egypt next week. The Egyptian Book of the Dead was one
of several texts to guide one through this ordeal, and gave advice on what to
say to Osiris, to escape penalty.
Egyptians envisaged a flat earth, with Heaven above and the
Underworld below; the Book of Genesis envisages a similar three-tiered universe.
Egyptians depicted the sun as sailing across the sky in his boat; in the
west he would be swallowed each night by
the goddess Nut, whose body stretched across the underworld. In the morning she
would give birth to the sun in the east once more. But this daily cycle had to
be maintained by priestly rites in the temples; otherwise the sun would not
rise, and everyone would die. In the same way, priestly rites were essential to
ensure the annual Nile flood, which provided Egypt's food.
Akhenaten's religion abolished all this. At night, nothing
happened; and there was no Judgment of the Dead:
. "The great cosmic drama of the night course of the sun and its
corollary, the deceased's journey to the
divine tribunal for trial, disappear. Osiris, ruler of the dead, who also
rules the underworld, immediately disappears from the theological system
...
" Everything that relates to ... Osiris disappears: judgment of the dead, pilgrimage to
Abydos ..., the field of offerings, the field of reeds… no need either of Book of the Dead, or
any other funerary book. ...
"At night there's
nothing happening, the living and the dead rest; we simply note that the
Aten is gone, but we do not speculate on its future."
So Akhenaten's revolution has similarities to the Atheism
currently sweeping away tradition religion in the West. Will there be a
religious revival here, as there has been in Russia now that Communism has
fallen?
The iconography of Madonna and Child, Mary and the child
Jesus, is based on the earlier iconography of Isis and Horus, which was
universal in ancient Egypt and popular in the Roman Empire. The similarities
were one reason that Egyptians converted to (Coptic) Christianity - they felt
comfortable with a cult that seemed familiar. In the same way, when the Church
was competing with the religion of Mithra the sun-god, for the soul of the Roman
Empire, it copied elements of the Mithraic cult, such as depicting Jesus as the
sun, and moving the date of his birth to December 25, the winter solistice.
Similarly in Mexico and Peru, where Catholicism incorporates
much of Aztec and Inca religion. Jewish and Protestant fundamentalists depict
this as a backsliding to paganism. But now that we appreciate the ancient world
more - witness the tourism to ancient sites - such preservation of the past can
be seen as a good thing, a strength of the Catholic Church rather than a
weakness. The other side have a mentality like the Taliban.
Gods of India occur in trinities; Egyptian religion also
featured trinities. Oriris and Isis were husband and wife, Horus their son. In
Luxor, I will be looking for another trinity, that of Amun (god), Mut (goddess)
and Khon (their son).
The triumph of Christianity in Egypt "led to a virtual abandonment of pharaonic traditions:
with the disappearance of the Egyptian
priests and priestesses who officiated at the temples, no-one could read the hieroglyphs of
Pharaonic Egypt, and its temples were
converted to churches or abandoned to the desert." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt_(Roman_province)
In contrast to Catholic Christianity, which preserved ancient
cultures, the Reformation made Christianity more Jewish and oriented to the Old
Testament, such that Heinrich Heine diagnosed Protestantism as "a Judaism which allows
you to eat pork": http://mailstar.net/sombart.html.
But the affair between American Protestants and Zionists will
be put to the test if the Third Temple is built. The Jewish side isays that the
Messiah will then come, whereas the Protestants say that Jesus was Messiah.
Judaism was once a major proselytsing religion in the Roman
Empire; it was only the schism caused by Christianity, and the loss of many of
the converts to it, which put an end to such missionary activity.
The Jewish Uprising of 66AD, which led to the Fall of
Jerusalem in 70AD, the destruction of the Second Temple, and the seige of
Masada, led early Christians to distance themselves from Judaism.
Given that these events were traumatic to Jews, Romans and
Christians, S. G. F. Brandon asked why the books of the New Testament don't
mention them. His answer is that Christianity was completely recast by these
events, as it switched from James' "Jewish Christanity" to Paul's "Hellenistic
Christianity".
Brandon argues that the Jewish uprising of 66-70 changed
Christianity. As Rome came down hard on
the rebellion, Chrisians were forced to distance themselves from it. The
fall of Jerusalem led to the fall of the Jerusalem Church and, with it, Jewish
Christianity.
Paul's Gentile Christianity took over the Church, split with
Judaism, and redefined Chrisianity as
pacifist. Mark's gospel, written in Rome just after the triumph, portrayed
Jesus as a loyal Roman.
Matthew's gospel, based in Alexandria, rejected Jewish
militancy and portrayed Jesus as a pacifist with Buddha-like qualities.
Brandon's argument is these books:
The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church (1951)
Jesus and the Zealots (1967)
The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth (1968)
More from S. G. F. Brandon at http://mailstar.net/jewish-revolt.html
The changes enabled
the "Hellenistic" faction, associated with Paul and Rome, to triumph over the
"Jewish" faction, associated with James and Jerusalem. Jewish scholar Robert
Eisenmann makes the same case in his book The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First
Christians, then in its sequel James
the Brother of Jesus. These books are pitched at Christians, aiming to get
them to switch allegiance from Paul to James. Hyam Maccoby, another Jewish
author, also targets Paul in his book The Mythmaker.
The events of 70AD facilitated the momentous shift of
religious centre from Jerusalem to Rome. Prior to the destruction, Christians
worshipped in the Temple, and both Jewish and Gentile Christians venerated it as
their chief shrine. Now, with Rome in disarray, could a rebuilt Third Temple
become the chief shrine, not only for Jews but for Christians too? What of
Jesus' retort, reported in the Gospels, 'Destroy this Temple and I will rebuild
in three days'? Does that not imply that HE is now the Temple, and that a
physical temple is no longer needed?
Will the Jewish Messiah be the Christian AntiChrist?
If the Third Temple is built, will this be the end of Pauline
Christianity? If not, Christianity will have to redefine itself once more -
perhaps taking a cue from Marcion.
Can Islam survive the loss of its third-holiest shrine, the
Dome of the Rock - from which Mohammad ascended to Heaven - when it is destroyed
to make way for the Third Temple? Will it be the end of Islam? or of Judaism? or
of all of us?
Brandon
is one of a number of scholars who think that Jesus and his followers were
Zealots. He seems to have been influenced by Joel Carmichael, a Jewish author
who made the case in his book The Death
of Jesus. Eisenmann argues so too; so does Moslem schoar Reza Aslan. Against
them see Martin Hengel's book Victory over Violence: Jesus and the
Revolutionists.
The Jewish uprisings against Rome manifested a violence like
Israel's wars today, featuring zealotry and dualism as found in the Dead Sea
Scrolls and in the Book Of Revelation.
Was Jesus one of those Zealots, as Eisenmann claims? Or their
opponent, as Hengel argues? Such questions are very pertinent today, given the
events in the Middle East.
The Book of Revelation is really a Jewish book. More exactly,
it is a book of Jewish Christianity, the zealous kind with clear ancestry in the
Dead Sea Scrolls, rather than a book of Pauline Christianity.
John W. Marshall shows so in his book Parables of War:
Reading John's Jewish Apocalypse. It should not have been admitted into the New
Testament canon.
If you would like to buy any of the above-mentioned books,
you can do so easily though the Abebooks chain of second-hand bookshops: https://www.abebooks.com/
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