Badger3k
Posts: 861
Joined: Mar. 2008
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| Quote (Schroedinger's Dog @ Sep. 01 2011,04:04) | | Quote (Quack @ Sep. 01 2011,08:16) | I would like to draw attention to "The Jesus Mysteries" by Peter Gandy and Timothy Freke. I have read it many times and have also read the extensive notes section as well as the list of literature references.
One may disagree with the authors on the conclusions they draw but we nevertheless - unless we have sold out to the Bible - may want to reconsider some of our thoughts on the origins and the content of the NT.
I quote from the first page:
| Quote | The Unthinkable Thought
Jesus said, "It is to those who are worthy of my Mysteries that I tell my Mysteries."
The Gospel of Thomas
On the site where the Vatican now stands there once stood a Pagan temple. Here Pagan priests observed sacred ceremonies, which early Christians found so disturbing that they tried to erase all evidence of them ever having been practiced. What were these shocking Pagan rites? Gruesome sacrifices or obscene orgies perhaps? This is what we have been led to believe. But the truth is far stranger than this fiction.
Where today the gathered faithful revere their Lord Jesus Christ, the ancients worshiped another godman who, like Jesus, had been miraculously born on December 25 before three shepherds. In this ancient sanctuary Pagan congregations once glorified a Pagan redeemer who, like Jesus, was said to have ascended to heaven and to have promised to come again at the end of time to judge the quick and the dead. On the same spot where the Pope celebrates the Catholic mass, Pagan priests also celebrated a symbolic meal of bread and wine in memory of their savior who, just like Jesus, had declared:
He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation. |
In "The Gnostic Gospels", Elaine Pagels argue:
| Quote | | It is the winners who write history-their way. No wonder, then, that the traditional accounts of the origins of Christianity first defined the terms (naming themselves "orthodox" and their opponents "heretics"); then they proceeded to demonstrate-at least to their own satisfaction-that their triumph was historically inevitable, or, in religious terms, "guided by the Holy Spirit." But the discoveries [of the Gnostic gospels] at Nag Hammadi reopen fundamental questions. |
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Huh, that's weird. I always thought the temple under St Peter was a temple to Cybele, a Phrygian godess akin to Gaďa...
ETA: Oh, now I see Ba'al was also worshipped there. Ok then... |
Freke and Gandy have been criticized by biblical scholars (and others) in their "looseness" with the facts. They have some good stuff, but anything they say should be checked out with other sources. There is no excuse for shoddy scholarship.
(and, crapcakes that I lost my hard drive - I think the links were there since I can't find them anymore. A lot was in the old internet infidels discussions of a few years back. I think, perhaps, that Higgaion had something, and Richard Carrier did as well. Apologies for the lack of links and sources)
(also, although I do read such scholars - and listen to their podcasts - as Robert M Price, and find his arguments somewhat compelling in his books, you have to take it all with a grain of salt, and the official story with a whole freaking shaker of salt!)
(also, congrats on the future wedding - was too busy this past however long to post anything much)
(and - shades of KF! - CARM has as much credibility as Alex Jones' Prison Planet does)
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"Just think if every species had a different genetic code We would have to eat other humans to survive.." : Joe G
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