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@ Profitable Fable of Christ @

 
 
000
22:50 / 14.10.02
"How well we know what a profitable superstition this fable of Christ has been for us"

-- Pope Leo X (1513-1521)

If there is one wish that can come true, then it's that of the total destruction of the Church. The followers discovering they have based their lives on lies, turning against those who govern them.

"The groundbreaking book, The Bible Fraud by Australian author Tony Bushby, reveals to the world for the first time original new information about the emergence of the New Testament and its story of Jesus Christ. It provides historical evidence showing not only vital ancient manuscripts been hidden from the public domain but also other sensitive and associated Biblical material has been purposely withheld or suppressed from the general populace."

Sample:

Two confused stories in the Gospels

JESUS CHRIST HAS CAPTURED THE IMAGINATION OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE around the world for almost 2000 years.Few people know that he represents something far different and the following chapters unravel an entirely new story about the circumstances surrounding the birth and emergence of the Christian religion.

In order to cover this ground it is necessary to consider the New Testament stories from a different perspective.By stripping away their supernatural elements,the earliest church writings relay a confused skeletal outline of the lives of two separate men.This work unravels those stories and shows how the New Testament came into being and what it really is.Until now,this aspect of the Gospel story has never been fully developed and by coordinating new information with surviving records,a reconstruction of the probable course of events that resulted in Christianity today is presented.

What was the church trying to hide? IN 1415,THE CHURCH OF ROME TOOK AN EXTRAORDINARY STEP TO destroy all knowledge of two Second Century Jewish books that it said contained ‘the true name of Jesus Christ.’ The Antipope Benedict XIII firstly singled out for condemnation a secret Latin treatise called ‘Mar Yesu ’ and then issued instructions to destroy all copies of the Book of Elxai.No editions of these writings now publicly exist,but church archives recorded that they were once in popular circulation and known to the early presbyters.Knowledge of these writings survived from quotations made by Bishop Hippolytus of Rome (176 –236)and St Epiphanius of Salamis (315 – 403)along with references in some early editions of the Talmud of Palestine and Babylonia.The Rabbinic fraternity once held the destroyed manuscripts with great reverence for they were comprehensive original records reporting the ‘Life of Rabbi Jesus ’.

Later,in a similar manner,Pope Alexander VI (1492 –1503)ordered all copies of the Talmud destroyed.The Council of the Inquisition required as many Jewish writings as possible to burn with the Spanish Grand Inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada (1420 –98),responsible for the elimination of 6000 volumes at Salamanca.In 1550,Cardinal Caraffa,the Inquisitor-General procured a Bull from the Pope repealing all previous permission for priests to read the Talmud which he said contained ‘hostile stories about Jesus Christ ’. Bursting forth with fury at the head of his minions,he seized every copy he could find in Rome and burnt them.Solomon Romano (1554)also burnt many thousands of Hebrew scrolls and in 1559 every Hebrew book in the city of Prague was confiscated.The mass destruction of Jewish books included hundreds of copies of the Old Testament and caused the irretrievable loss of many original hand-written documents.The oldest text of the Old Testament that survived,before the discovery of the Dead

Sea Scrolls was said to be the Bodleian Codex (Oxford),which was dated to circa 1100AD.In an attempt by the church to remove damaging Rabbinic information about Jesus Christ from the face of the earth,the Inquisition burnt 12,000 volumes of the Talmud However,many copies survived and today provide opposing traditions about the person called Jesus Christ.

In the mass destruction of Jewish writings,the church overlooked two particular British documents that also recorded ‘the true name of Jesus Christ ’. They survive to this day in the British Museum and are called the Chronicles and the Myvyean Manuscript treasured ancient documents with a very early origin.Supporting evidence was also found on early First Century gold, silver and bronze coins discovered at the site of an ancient mint at Camulodunum (Colchester)in Britain.‘Thus the testimony of the Briton coins establishes clearly and positively the historicity of the traditional ancient ‘Chronicles ’ as authentic historical records.’1

The evidence is compelling,and additional supporting clues are found on a mysterious headstone in Germany,in Vatican art treasures,and in a series of coded sentences in the Shakespearean Plays.Further concealed information was left in the form of specially created statues commissioned by a Catholic priest and positioned in a small hilltop church in Southern France.Coded ciphers were also secreted into the first English-language printings of the Bible and a combination of all clues provides interlocking information and presents a new insight into the origin of Christianity.

Secret ciphers in the New Testament It was the ‘wisest fool in Christendom ’,2 who ‘authorised ’ the translation and publication of the first Protestant version of the Bible into English.He came to the English throne in 1603 and quickly became unpopular because of ‘his disgusting personal habits and his unsavoury character ’.3 He pretended to be a scholar in theology and philosophy,but his learning was shallow and superficial.He wallowed in filth,moral and physical,but was endowed with a share of cunning that his associates called,‘a kind of crooked wisdom ’.4

For his new edition of the Bible he issued a set of personal ‘Rules ’ the translators were to follow and ordered revisions to proceed,although he never contributed a farthing to its cost.Work began early in 1607 and took a committee of forty-seven men (some records say fifty-four,others say fifty)two years and nine months to rewrite the Bible and make ready for the press.Each man received thirty shillings per week for his contribution. Upon its completion in 1609,a remarkable event occurred —the translators handed over the reviser ’s manuscripts of what is now called the King James Bible to King James for his final personal approval.‘It was self-evident that James was not competent to check their work and edit it,so he passed the manuscripts on to the greatest genius of all time ...Sir Francis Bacon.’5

Sir Francis Bacon (1561 –1626)was a man of many talents,a lawyer,linguist and composer.He mastered every subject he undertook;mathematics, geometry,music,poetry,painting,astronomy,classical drama and poetry, philosophy,history,theology and architecture.He was a man of many aims and purposes,the father of modern science,remodeler of modern law,patron of modern democracy,and possibly the reviver of Freemasonry.His life and works are extensively documented,and his intellectual accomplishments widely recognized,particularly in academic circles.At the age of sixteen,he was sent to Paris ‘direct from the Queens Hand ’ and there studied Egyptian, Arabian,Indian and Greek philosophy with particular attention given to the Ancient Mysteries and their Ritual Rites.He personally recorded that, while in Paris,he created a secret cipher system that could be inserted into a document without arousing suspicion.While living in Europe,Francis Bacon was initiated into the mysterious Order of the Knights Templar and learnt a very special secret.Before he returned to London,he travelled to France,Italy,Germany and Spain and at the age of twenty completely devoted himself to the study of law.From his understanding of the secret information he had learned during his initiation into the Knights Templar,he conceived the idea of reactivating various Secret Societies and in 1580 founded the secret Rosicrosse Literary Society in Gray ’s Inn.Later in the same year,he founded the Lodge of Free and Accepted or Speculative Masons,also at Gray ’s Inn.

On 25 June 1607 Sir Francis Bacon was appointed Solicitor-General and Chief Advisor to the Crown.He had presented new ideas to the Government for the Reformation of the church and was officially instructed to commence restructuring the Bible.Research in the Records Office of the British Museum revealed that original documents still exist which refer to important proceedings associated with Sir Francis Bacon ’s involvement with the editing of both the Old and New Testaments They revealed that he personally selected and paid the revisers of the New Testament who completed their task under the instructions of Bacon ’s long-time friend,Dr Andrews. Statue of the editor of the Bible, Sir Francis Bacon. © Photography:Thomas L.Lithgow,Esq.

The first English language manuscripts of the Bible remained in Bacon ’s possession for nearly a year.During that time:

...he hammered the various styles of the translators into the unity,rhythm, and music of Shakespearean prose,wrote the Prefaces and created the whole scheme of the Authorized Version.6

He also encoded secret information into both the Old and New Testament An ancient document recorded that the true history of early Christianity was known to the initiates of the Order of the Knights Templar,having originally been:

...imparted to Hugh de Payens by the Grand-Pontiff of the Order of the Temple (of the Nazarene sect),one named Theocletes,after which it was learned by some Knights in Palestine.7

Regarding the months of editing work applied to the Bible by Bacon,his biographer,William T.Smedley, confirmed the extent of the editing:

It will eventually be proved that the whole structure of the Authorised Bible was Francis Bacon ’s.He was an ardent student not only of the Bible, but also of early manuscripts.St Augustine,St Jerome,and writers of theological works,were studied by him with industry.8

At the completion of the editing,Sir Francis Bacon and King James I had a series of meetings to finalise editorial matters associated with the new Bible. It was at this time that King James ordered a ‘Dedication to the King ’ to be drawn up and included in the opening pages.He also wanted the phrase ‘Appointed to be read in the Churches ’ to appear on the title page.This was an announcement clarifying that King James had personally given the church ‘Special Command ’ for this particular version of the Bible to be used in preference to the vast array of Greek and Latin Vulgate Bibles current at the time.His reason was personal,as King James had previously instructed the revisers to ‘defend the position of the king ’ in their restructuring of the texts.This was seen as an attempt to distance the Protestant Bible from the Catholic version.The Protestant versions of the Bible are thinner by seven books than the Catholic version and the variant churches have never agreed on a uniform Bible.In their translation of 1 Peter 2:13 the revisors changed the phrase ‘the emperor,as supreme ’ to ‘the king,as supreme ’.Because King James ’ Bible was written to support the authority of a king,the later church often referred to it as the one from ‘authority ’,and it later came to be presented as if officially ‘authorised ’.In subsequent revisions,the word ‘authorised ’ found its way onto the title page and later still came to be printed on the cover,giving King James ’ new Bible a false sense of authenticity.

The King James Bible is considered by many today to be the ‘original ’ Bible and therefore ‘genuine ’ and all later revisions simply counterfeits forged by ‘higher critics ’.Others think the King James Bible is ‘authentic ’ and ‘authorised ’ and presents the original words of the authors as translated into English from the ‘original ’ Greek text.However,the ‘original ’ Greek text was not written until around the mid-Fourth Century and was a revised edition of writings compiled decades earlier in Aramaic and Hebrew.Those earlier documents no longer exist 9 and the Bibles we have today are five linguistic removes from the first Bibles written.What was written in the ‘original originals ’ is quite unknown.It is important to remember that the words ‘authorised ’ and ‘original ’,as applied to the Bible,do not mean ‘genuine ’,‘authentic ’ or ‘true ’.
 
 
Hieronymus
00:21 / 15.10.02
Hey. If it's endorsed by Ramtha, it must be reliable, right? *smirk*

Ya had me interested until just about there, Chrome. Now I'm not so sure.
 
 
The Natural Way
09:22 / 15.10.02
Someone should put up a FAQ about the Greenlanders for the newbies.
 
 
Tom Coates
11:15 / 15.10.02
I think that's potentially a very good idea...
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
13:35 / 15.10.02
A Barbelith People FAQ has now started in the Conversation.

link
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
13:37 / 15.10.02
Once again I feel a big surge of 'so what?' about this, the idea that Christianity is as much about politics about faith is not a surprise and I think most people in the world, including those in the Christian faith, would agree with you.

Once the early Christians managed to get past the 'being killed by the Romans' phase it was a matter of choosing what was 'correct' and what was 'false'. It has always been about control.

Is it part of revolution? Only if you care. I'm an atheist so it doesn't matter much to me.
 
 
The Falcon
13:48 / 15.10.02
Who's that father in the South o' France? Initials B.S., by any chance? I think a lot of you are awful hard on Reformed Chrome... as he only reports things he's found, and, to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if at least a few of them were true. 'Cos general media sources are just soooo reliable, aren't they.

Reclaim the spectacle.
 
 
Wrecks City-Zen
23:52 / 16.10.02
Agreed.

I wish someone could tell me what nefarious deeds these greenlanders have commited...

Anyhoo- I personally find Francis Bacon very intriguing and would like to learn more frome "reformed chrome's" viewpoint. From this thread alone, I learned more from my previous "GOOGLE" searches.Thanks!

Re:XXX
 
 
000
20:28 / 19.10.02
Originally, this was brought to my attention by an Australian Vince (REX, you have the address), and it was this:

"Setting The Record Straight

By Margaret Churchill
admin@thebiblefraud.com

URL:
http://www.rense.com/general30/straight.htm

10-11-2

One third of an article recently published on this site was taken from a book with no acknowledgement of the source. The material, used to support an article about British Freemasonry, was taken from the book "The Bible Fraud" authored by Tony Bushby. To set the record straight, the following outline of the book is presented here as the author's conclusion to the origins of the New Testament.

The story of Jesus Christ as portrayed in the Bible and supported by the Church is a deliberate fabrication! Even today in the highest levels of secret societies, initiates are taught that there were actually two people, illegitimate identical twins called Judas Khrestus and Rabbi Jesus. Their mother was Arab and their father was Roman and they were born of royal blood.

The brothers were raised in the Essene community and became leaders of their faith. They had very different personalities, one being exoteric and the other esoteric.

The elder brother, Judas Khrestus, was a soldier, a drunkard, had an uncontrollable temper and may have been homosexual or bisexual. He amassed a group of followers, which the church now calls the apostles of Jesus Christ but they were in reality the militia of Judas Khrestus.

With his Khrestian (Christian) followers, he conspired to take the throne of Rome, his royal birthright, and was captured, tried, and was sentenced to be crucified. (The Khrestians and the Essenic army, the Nazarenes, would today be called terrorists.) At the trial, Judas exercised his royal birthright to have a replacement and then was sold as a slave to live out his days as a carpenter in India.

Rabbi Jesus, on the other hand, was a gentle man, a teacher and was initiated into secret societies in Egypt at the highest of levels similar to the 33rd degree of Freemasonry of which many of our world leaders today are members. He had three wives, one of whom we know as Mary Magdalene, a Celtic Princess (their children and their descendants produced the British royal lineage). He stole the Torah from the temple to teach "a secret" to all mankind and travelled to Britain where he became the leader of the Druids. He was stoned to death in London at the age of 63.

In the next few centuries, followers of both Judas Khrestus and Rabbi Jesus travelled from village to village as roving orators. They were basically illiterate and they spoke to the rabble (that's us!) for rewards of food, drink and sex. These people were called Presbyters and today we call them Priests. A more educated Presbyter, called a Biscop (Bishop), would control several Presbyters and would transcribe the gospels for his group.

Early in the fourth century, it became well noted that a problem was occurring in the known world. politics! As late as 325, the Christian religion did not have an official god. There were more than two hundred variant gospels in use at his time and the number of Presbyters had increased dramatically. Bitter arguments raged between opposing factions about their conflicting stories and groups of Presbyters and Biscops violently clashed over audience and territory.

An earlier attempt to deify either Judas Khrestus or his twin brother Rabbi Jesus (or somebody else) had failed. However, in 324, Emperor Constantine issued a decree commanding all Presbyters and their subordinates travel to the city of Nicaea in the Roman province of Bithymia. They were instructed by the Emperor to bring with them their manuscripts from which they orated to the rabble.

The power that the Emperors wielded was awesome and can still be felt today. Constantine saw in this developing system of belief the opportunity to make a combined state religion and protect it by law. In the declining years of the Roman Empire, the power over the people thus passed from the state to the church!

The first general church council of the Catholic Church was convened in the year 325. On 21 June, the day of the Summer Solstice, (and under those occult conditions) a total of 2048 "presbyters, deacons, sub-deacons, acolytes and exorcists" gathered at Nicaea to decide what Christianity really was, what it would be, what writings were to be used and who was to be it's God. They were described as "a set of illiterate, simple creatures who understood nothing".

After a long and bitter debate, a vote was finally taken and it was with a majority show of hands that Judas Khrestus and Rabbi Jesus both became God (161 votes for and 157 votes against). The Emperor effectively joined elements of the two individual life stories of the twin brothers into a singular creation. The doctrine of the Celtic / British church of the west was democratically attached to the Presbyters stories of the east.

As in the normal Roman tradition following the original example set by the deification of Caesar, a deification ceremony was then performed. Thus the deified ones were then called 'saviours' and looked upon as gods. Temples, altars, and images with attributes of divinity were erected and public holidays proclaimed on their birthdays. Their funerals were dramatized as the scene of their resurrection and immortality. All these godly attributes passed as a legal right to Emperor Constantine's new deity, Jesus Christ.

The Emperor then instructed the Biscops to compile a uniform collection of new writings using the stories from the large number of Presbyters as the reference source. This was the first mention of finished copies of a Christian 'New Testament' in the history of mankind.

Finally, a quote from one of the conspirators "How well we know what a profitable superstition this fable of Christ has been for us". Pope Leo X (1513-1521)

Reference: "The Bible Fraud" by Tony Bushby
http://thebiblefraud.com"


While this link provides an article from December 2001/January 2002.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
10:03 / 20.10.02
Why would Constantine want to create a new religion though, surely the old Romano-Greek belief structure still worked fine? And in that one Emperor's were semi-divine themselves, often becoming Gods on their death, while in Christian theology even Constantine was nobody.
 
 
The Monkey
04:59 / 21.10.02
The article has a lot of problems with anachronisms. Like the names of the twins Judas and Jesus, which are Anglicization of the Hebrew and Aramaic Iuda/Yuda and Iesu/Yesu...which makes no sense since the documents supposed cited are of pre-English period. Maybe this is just a logistics decision by the author, but it smells funny.

The "royal blood" story doesn't run very clearly either...given that the Romans didn't really have a royal lineage in the time period that all this was going on. On the Bible Fraud site it says that the father of the twins was the man that became emperor Tiberius, which really muddies the water, because Tiberius was the adopted son of Augustus, the child of Livia's first marriage, and thus not of any particular "blood" whatsoever...not even relative to the line of Julius Caesar. And I don't even know how to address the idea of an "Arab princess" at that time period, when "Arab" was not even a recognized ethnic category amongst the Bedouin, etc. Claims about the British royal line are equally problematic to actually track across centuries on the basis of the a very few written sources.

And given the highly artificial-seeming dichotomy between the personalities and actions of the brothers, in what fashion could their doctrine be interrelated by later generations? It is explained that Presbyters at the Council of Nicea voted the fuse the two personal histories, yet it is not explained how *prior* to Nicea the two men's doctrines were being communicated sufficiently in tandem for them to be deemed as minglable.

And speaking of Nicea...what of the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Christ and was the focal point of that Council of 325? What of the three Councils of Antioch prior to Nicea that also tried to deal with establishing for the whole of Christendom *one* interpretation of the relationship between Christ and God, between the divinity and humanity of Jesus? Hell, what of the Nicene Creed? (And in the entirity of the Roman Empire the Presbyters added up to 300-someodd hands?)

It seems to me that Bushby, like so many conspiracy historians, has argued his case by present only a delicate slice of available materials, carefully abstracting events and statements from their larger contexts, then threading across time and space into a illusorily continuous garment. This fallacious timeline is then supported by arguments incorporating both sweeping generalisations across swaths of continents and tree-for-the-forest micro-analyses of particular events (to the exclusion of a thousand others).
 
 
Rev. Orr
10:14 / 21.10.02
Never mind Jesus and his big bro. I want to know more about this Leo X who was a conspirator at Nicea in 325 and then still around to be Pope nearly 1200 years later. The wages of sin may be death, but it seems the pension plan is the bollocks.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
15:02 / 21.10.02
Why would Constantine want to create a new religion though, surely the old Romano-Greek belief structure still worked fine? And in that one Emperor's were semi-divine themselves, often becoming Gods on their death, while in Christian theology even Constantine was nobody.

Well, that was just it, it wasn't working fine. No one was buying it any more. The Empire had outgrown it. It was based on the perfectibility of man, that the gods had created men with the capacity for perfection. The Emperors would say that they WERE the perfect man, ie gods themselves, but it was becoming obvious to everyone that they were just like everyone else: hopelessly flawed. So it was comforting to imagine a perfect god who would absolve you of your imperfections, and the man you acknowledged as your master was the one closest to God.

I dunno about this other bunk, though. This thing about soldiering comes from a Greek pun on parthenogenesis, doesn't it? Parthenogenesis means 'born from God', but pantherogenesis, from 'panthera', a mercenary, means 'born from a soldier'.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
15:21 / 21.10.02
Thanks for that Qalyn.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:51 / 22.10.02
Yep. Thanks for being actively misleading.


First up, obviously, "Romano-Greek" religion is an absurd oversimplification to describe two intertwining sets of beliefs that had been interacting for a good 900-odd years at this point. And, of course, the "Romano-Greek" religion described in, say, Homer or Vergil is based not on the perfection of man, but the decline and continuing estrangement of man from the gods. Nor indeed let us look at the actual practice of Emperor-worship, the idea of the genius or the possibility that different emperors may have had different positions on this. Or the possible political implications of Constantine's conversion.

But let us stop, briefly, to point out that parthenogenesis does not, can not, has not ever meant "born from a God". No way, no how, not ever. "Parthenos" means "maiden". This is not even a schoolboy error. And, although I do not have my Liddell and Scott to hand, I have no recollection of the word "panthera" to mean "mercenary".
There is the word "panther", which in Latin is represented as "panthera". It means "panther".

Now, assuming that I am wrong about the latter, the former would not entirely invalidate your point. Except it would have to be a very *late* pun, since "pathenogenesis" is first recorded, if memory serves, as an English word somewhere in the 19th century, long after "panther" to mean mercenary, if it ever existed, existed. Which, arguably, is after the time of Jesus and his chroniclers. And his gay twin.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
17:13 / 22.10.02
Well, I was asking about the Greek pun -- though I guess I should've used more question marks if I wanted to avoid a spanking. As for the rest, I was just blindly parroting a bunch of silly books I've read.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
18:38 / 22.10.02
Why would Constantine want to create a new religion though, surely the old Romano-Greek belief structure still worked fine? And in that one Emperor's were semi-divine themselves, often becoming Gods on their death, while in Christian theology even Constantine was nobody.

A professor that I trust once told me that there was much more religious freedom in the Roman Empire before it became a Christian empire than after, when there was comparitavely little. Maybe that had something to do with it. It's just that much more control over the people, isn't it?

Then again, I know little about the Roman Empire compared to many on this board, plus I am going off what I was told by someone else. If anyone knowledgeable about this sort of thing could clue me in, I'd appreciate it.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
19:50 / 22.10.02
Sorry for this split response; I had to go to class.

I'm surprised to hear that parthenogenesis is such a new word. I'd understood that parthenos="virgin" and "virgin" birth was a widely-used flag of godishness with mythic types. I thought I'd seen Athena referred to as parthenogenetic, but I can see how I'd draw the wrong assumptions from context. Being a product of the NYC public school system, I learn most of the things I do from context, not intensive classical training. So, why is it called the Parthenon? Named for the priestesses, I guess, like the Vatican.

We'll have to leave panther alone, as I've no idea where I picked that up. It was just one of those things lying around unexamined in the "weird factoids" section of my brain, which is why I was (I thought) asking about it.

But I think you're being a little hard on Lada and me with regard to "Romano-Greek" beliefs. It's perfectly reasonable to generalize on matters without including a list of definitions when you're gassing about alternate viewpoints of events, and just as reasonable to assume that readers of Barbelith can recognize generalizations when they see words like "Romano-Greek belief structure". I'm afraid I can't bang out a Works Cited page for you right now, but I think I got the impression I gave from Pagans and Christians (Robin Lane Fox, some time in the late '80's?), which I read about 2 years ago. But I could have gotten it from several other places.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
00:02 / 23.10.02
To reproduce a PM I just sent to Johnny AWOL:

I'm afraid that this is rather out of my period. However, I can say without reference that the Roman Empire was in general enormously religiously tolerant - at various points the Greek deities, the Roman numina, the Mithraic belief, Judaism, various Eastern religions (which were absorbed to a greater or lesser extent into Rome - for example, the worship of Isis links to the Eleusinian mysteries and the goddess Roma - last book of the Metamorphoses is useful here) all rubbed along. There was religious persecution, but generally it was either as a result of unilateral statist action (Nero's persecution of the Christians, which tailed off as soon as he ceased to be emperor, and was recognised as early as a couple of generations afterwards as the actions of a madman) or more generally faiths which refused to subscribe to the same religious freedoms. A very good way to annoy a Roman, it seemed, was to tell them that their gods did not exist and yours did.

Roman Emperor-worship was dubious - emperors fell in and out of fashion just as the gods did. The only one with a real claim was Julius Caesar, for being the man who helped Augustus to power, and what was worshipped was niot the empror but the genius - the spirit released after death. Certainly for a good chunk of the fisrt couple of centuries of the pagan empire, a Caesar declaring himself a god during his life was considered terribly bad taste and usually led to fulsome condemnation after his death (Check out accounts of Caligula - Suetonious' lives of the Caesars is the best source)

Certainly, the greatest atrocities against other religions were generally commited under Christian emperors (Theodosius II made a habit of desecrating sites sacred to Zeus, and was generally a royal pain). Essentially, people were as nasty and venal then as they are now, but it expressed itself in very different ways; bear in mind that the great epic of the foundation of what would ultimately be the Roman Republic, Vergil's Aeneid, had Aeneas carrying his household gods from Troy (somewhere on the coast of the Black Sea) over to Italy....


I await a proper historian to correct me all over the shop. In general, I'm not sure you *can* have a "religious dictatorship" in the Empire - it was too diffuse and too trady, at least until things started going to pieces. Take Sul, the British local goddess worshipped at Bath, who was absorbed into the Roman cult as Sulis Minerva, Bath itself being called Aquae Sulis (the waters of Sul)....it was a very adaptive structure.

I'm surprised to hear that parthenogenesis is such a new word. I'd understood that parthenos="virgin" and "virgin" birth was a widely-used flag of godishness with mythic types. I thought I'd seen Athena referred to as parthenogenetic, but I can see how I'd draw the wrong assumptions from context.

If you "understood" that parthenos meant "virgin", why did you decide to translate "parthenogenesis" as "being born from God"? I hope this doesn't look liek I'm having a go at you, or at least you specifically, but there is a pretty important point here. Once the meanings and uses of words start to get messed around with, especially when we're talking about Mr. Christ, the whole edifice becomes incoherent by degrees. And once somethingis said with an air of fact, people are encouraged, for all sorts of reasons, to believe that. Because it is now written down, and thus has an air of canon about it that it didn't have when it was just a wrong thing in a wrong head.

Much like the boy who supplied lots of useful information on Asteron having done a web-search, leaving some junior magician to be possessed by nasties and saw his uncle's head off in the Conversation. Oooh...new thread in the offing.

Athena was born without sex, and her birth was thus parthenogenetic. It is unlikely you heard that word being used from anyone before, say, Leaf's commentary on the Iliad. She was born from the forehead of Zeus. If you want to call Zeus a virgin, that's fine by me, but don't be surprised when he hits you with a thunderbolt. The word parthenogenesis was, I believe, coined to describe post-Mendelian genetics, specifically the fertilisation of a plant from a single parent plant rather than from two.

So, why is it called the Parthenon? Named for the priestesses, I guess, like the Vatican.


The temple of Athena Parthenos is called the temple of Athena Parthenos (or, in common parlance, the Parthenon), because the cult statue inside it represented Athena the virgin (unlike Zeus, Athena was a virgin. There is a big difference between being born of a virgin and being a virgin. You may want to talk to Jesus about this, depending on your view of the Apocrypha. Failing that, Clark Kent). Elsewhere on the Acropolis you will find the temple of Athena Polias, which has a cult statue of Athena, protectress of the City. Thus, the Parthenon.

It was just one of those things lying around unesamined in the "weird factoids" section of my brain, which is why I was (I thought) asking about it.



Panther means, having checked Liddell and Scott, a panther. It may be used metaphorically of a mercenary somewhere, but I can't find an attribution. Jury's out. Not the immediate connection, though.

Parthenogenesis means 'born from God', but pantherogenesis, from 'panthera', a mercenary, means 'born from a soldier' is not a question. It is a statement. A misleading statement.

Oh, and just to keep things straight - the Vatican is called the Vatican after the Vaticanus, a hill to the right of the Tiber. "vates" does indeed mean a soothsayer or speaker of holy words, be that male or female. I would need to be convinced of the etymological connection.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
11:22 / 23.10.02
If you "understood" that parthenos meant "virgin", why did you decide to translate "parthenogenesis" as "being born from God"?

If the mother's a virgin, who's the father? Babies found in rivers, fly-swallowings, and so on, occur all over the place (Taliesin, the Mahabarata, the Old Testament, just off the top of my head -- 1,001 Nights, too, I think), and are a signal or shorthand that the hero described, owing to the paradox of his birth is the child of (a) god. I took a shortcut from "born of a virgin, therefore a son of God" to "born from God", and I think it's not an unreasonable shortcut to take. I also think it's obvious that it some sort of shorthand or metaphor, since what I did not say was "parthenos=God". I am totally surprised to learn that the word is so new when the concept is so old.

Parthenogenesis means 'born from God', but pantherogenesis, from 'panthera', a mercenary, means 'born from a soldier' is not a question. It is a statement. A misleading statement

Well, yes. Please believe me, though, that the entire subject was meant to be part of the question in the lead sentence. The misleadingness was definitely there, but it was unintended.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:46 / 23.10.02
I think we're drifting off-topic.

Point being, what *is* the topic at this point? Are we arguing about the implications of a notional plot by the (Catholic) church to destroy the true history of Jesus Christ?

Because that immediately seems to assume that there *is* a "true history of Jesus Christ", which assumes in turn the absolute historicity of Jesus Christ....

Or are we just saying that the (Catholic) Church decided on a particular story and subsequently revised out of existence conflictng accounts? Because that just reminds me of something a friend said to me about television drama - that television is like a wind tunnel; and therefore if you had 18 series of the League of Gentleman, say (or "Get a Life", for our viewers in the Americas), it would in the end be a slightly Northern-accented Terry and June. Likewise with religions; heterodoxy is pretty much necessarily smoothed away if you are trying to advance the idea that there is a single divine truth.

Or, are we looking at the fact that a particular group or particular groups of people want to reclaim Jesus, and feel they can only do so by (re)interpolating various details that they believe are more accurate reflections of "the real Jesus Christ"? And how closely that tallies to serial killers saying that God told them to do it?
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
14:04 / 23.10.02
Oh. I have no idea. I was just throwing in 2 cents about Romano-Greek belief structures.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
16:41 / 23.10.02
And I was revealing I've only read the 'Ladybird Book of Jesus Christ Conspiracies'...

Haus- Because that immediately seems to assume that there *is* a "true history of Jesus Christ", which assumes in turn the absolute historicity of Jesus Christ....

I can't speak about whether Chrome believes there was a 'true' Jesus Christ that 'really was' the son of God, I don't believe that at all, yet I'm happy to argue with someone from that pov until my ignorance stands resplendent. Maybe we should all say where we're coming from before our first posts in any argument thread...
 
 
Baz Auckland
16:41 / 23.10.02
Front Page of the National Post two days ago: "ossuary found in Egypt with inscription 'here lies James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus'"
 
 
Baz Auckland
16:42 / 23.10.02
Sorry. Israel, not Egypt...
 
 
cusm
19:47 / 23.10.02
Rabbi Jesus, on the other hand, was a gentle man, a teacher and was initiated into secret societies in Egypt at the highest of levels similar to the 33rd degree of Freemasonry of which many of our world leaders today are members. He had three wives, one of whom we know as Mary Magdalene, a Celtic Princess (their children and their descendants produced the British royal lineage). He stole the Torah from the temple to teach "a secret" to all mankind and travelled to Britain where he became the leader of the Druids. He was stoned to death in London at the age of 63.

*falls on floor laughing*
*gasping for breath*

That's the funniest thing I've heard in awhile. I rather thought the author was serious up until that part. Who needs fiction when you can have such marvelously creative histories as these? This is either a complete gag or utter insanity, neither of which makes for worthy content of acedemic debate. Well, save perhaps for the insanity.
 
 
000
14:07 / 01.11.02
I thought it would have been a dead give away, since this place is full of intelligent people schooled in all sorts of interesting endeavors, but here goes:

The 'fish'symbol Heron was attributed to Jesus Christ, pisces, the 2 fishes.
 
 
Rev. Orr
14:30 / 01.11.02
"Swim little fishy, swim, swim, swim. So they swam and they swam right over the dam."; the Ilysu dam; backed by guarantees from the British Government; run by Tony Blair; WHO IS THEREFORE THE SON OF GOD.

Why did I never see it before? The nanobots have shown me the truth.
 
 
Baz Auckland
23:18 / 01.11.02
Fun Fact: The Tomb of James, Jesus's supposed brother will be on display in Toronto from Nov16 to Dec29.
 
  
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