Historicity of Jesus - 2 - Printable Version

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - Printable Version

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Historicity of Jesus - 2 - ramana - 10-07-2008

Subash Kak on links between Zarthusthra (Golden Camel) and Vedic Hinduism

http://www.ece.lsu.edu/kak/zoro.pdf

Was Abraham an earlier dissenter of pre-Zarthusthraian Iranians?

Z essentially made the new religion a dichotomy by combining earlier trifold elements.

Abe had earlier made them combined into one, but only for those chosen.

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - dhu - 10-07-2008

The alleged Duality/Prophetism of Zoroastrianism is only apparent after viewing with Abrahamic filters. Deva-Asura "Duality" is also "discernible" in Sanatana Dharma but only after after viewing with Brahmo samaj type filter. These do not constitute a genuine abrahamic-type normative framework -- which had originally arisen with Christianity/Westernism. I believe even Pagan Juda"ism" was transformed only with advent of Christianity -- but with clear previous Seleucid attempts at engineering an anti-Cyrus (refer Wesselius). Once Yahweh-Jove connection is made, everything becomes clear. Herod itself is a most Greek name. Someone needs to sort out the timelines of the 1st, 2nd, and Herodian reconstructed temple alongside Finkelstein/Patai's work. There are allegations that 1st temple was a revisionist ploy. Husky had a post on another thread refuting Prophetic view of Zoroastrian"ism".

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - ramana - 10-21-2008

This is a rant on Nathan Shransky's book but has a lot of core beliefs of Xtianity and what it seeks to do.

---------------
Sharansky's mistaken identity
QUOTENatan Sharansky defied Soviet tyranny during the Cold War and thereby earned the gratitude of free people everywhere, including the United States, which in 2006 awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

After enduring years of persecution in Russia, Sharansky emigrated to Israel and became a political leader. In his new book, Defending Identity [1], he sets out to defend Jewish national identity by asserting that national identity as such is a good thing. We must belong to cultures and nations, Sharansky asserts, rather than to the insipid soup of global citizenship. The trouble is that some identities are hostile to other identities by their nature. Democracy should solve this problem, Sharansky argues, except that some identities are by their nature anti-democratic, and so on. 

A worthwhile thought was gestating in Sharansky's mind, but was stillborn in the present volume. Sharansky wants to say that the particularism of Jewish national identity offers universal benefits for humankind. But he does not want to say so in religious terms, and cannot find a clear way to say so in secular terms.

Jews often are loath to make theological claims for their own importance, which sound megalomaniac to secular ears. But the Jews might as well resign themselves to being hanged for a sheep as well as a lamb. Except for its religious implications, the world has little use for Jewish nationhood, and considers the presence of a few million Jews in the Middle East an inconvenience at best, and a danger at worst. That is why the only true friends of the Jewish state are American and some other evangelicals, and a few leaders of the Catholic Church.

Franz Rosenzweig, the great German-Jewish theologian, asserted that the history of Israel was the history of the world. Expansive as this claim may appear, it is well grounded in Rosenzweig's sociology of religion. What Rosenzweig meant is that Israel's existence forever transformed human identity. From Israel, Western Asia and Europe first heard the promise of eternal life, and afterwards looked at themselves differently. The pagans of the ancient world knew their days on Earth were numbered, and that their time would come to die out and be forgotten. But the promise of eternal life that the nations heard from the Jews undermined their ancient fatalism. 

Reasonably, or not, we want to live forever. The first people to believe that God promised that it would endure forever became the standard against which all nations must measure their condition. From Ireland to Afghanistan, the identities of all tribes and nations became a response to Israel: Christianity offers a New Israel, Islam a competitor to Israel, neo-paganism a Satanic parody of Israel. The trouble is that Jewish national identity is not one national identity among many national identities. There is only Jewish identity, and a set of responses to Jewish identity. Jewish national identity has a radically different character than all other national identities, for the Jews uniquely believe that their nation was summoned into being to serve the sole creator God of the Universe. 

It is somewhat uncomfortable for the Jewish to insist on the point, and it is understandable why Sharansky would wish to take refuge behind the notion of "identity" in general, but that simply doesn't work, and the Jews really have nothing to lose.

It is tricky to discuss human identity in other than religious terms, for our identity often implies continuity. With what do we identify that makes our existence more than a random occurrence? Our ties of culture, language, faith and kinship make us heirs to the past and participants in the future, and it is the future, the vanishing-point at the horizon, that defines the composition of the other images. Societies that reject religion also appear to reject the future, for example, by declining to have children. 

Sharansky takes to task utopian secular thinking, which claims that peace requires the extinction of all passionate attachments, national, religious or whatever. His antagonist is "post-identity" theory, for example, the head of the Modern Language Association who said, "Cosmopolites not only or even principally owe an allegiance to their place of birth but also to a broader, more worldly, supra and transnational world view," as opposed to the "negative consequences of resurgent nationalism, ethnic separatism, and religious fundamentalism".

Eliminating all passionate attachments, Sharansky might have said, is a fool's errand. A rabbinic tale of antiquity reports what happened when God decided to eliminate the ''evil impulse", by which the rabbis meant the competitive and sexual instinct among men. The next day not a single egg was laid in the land of Israel, and God was obliged to restore the impulse. Europe may have succeeded in eliminating nationalism, or rather, nationalism burnt itself out in two hideously destructive World Wars. As a result children no longer are born to the Europeans. The problem is self-liquidating. 

On the other hand, the two countries considered most suspect for their nationalism by the supposedly enlightened Europeans, the United States and Israel, are the only ones in the entire industrial world to reproduce at above replacement level. Sharansky is beating if not a dead horse, then a sterile one. All that secular enlightenment can say to humanity is what that exemplar of the enlightenment, Frederick the Great of Prussia, barked at his fleeing soldiers during the 1757 Battle of Kolin: Hunde, wollt ihr ewig leben? (Dogs, do you want to live forever?).

Countries subject to communist rule, the most atheistic and internationalist, also show by far the lowest birth rates.

Projected population in formerly communist countries
Population
(Thousands) 2005 2050 % Change
UkraineÂ Â Â 46918 25514 -46%
GeorgiaÂ Â Â 4473Â 2575Â Â -42%
BelarusÂ Â Â 9795 5746Â Â Â Â -41%
MoldovaÂ Â Â 3877 2330Â -40%
Source: United Nations

Russia itself is not far behind Belarus and Moldova in the race to national extinction. 

A great deal of violence has been perpetrated in the name of religion; the most violent of all supposedly religious wars, the Thirty Years War, had very little to do with religion. It is wrong to blame religion for war. Exterminating one's neighbors was the norm for human behavior from the dawn of man until early in the first millennium BCE, when the prophets of ancient Israel first spoke of universal peace under the reign of a single God.

The modern critique of religion emerged out of the 16th and 17th century wars of religion. Secular critics blame religion for the tempted as we may be tempted to dismiss as happenstance the way in which the idea of universal love came to humankind, but the peoples of the Earth did not dismiss it at all. The peoples of the Earth heard the message of God's love in the particular way in which it was told to them.

The Election of Israel as Franz Rosenzweig put it:
It was more or less through Christianity that thoughts of Election have spread among the individual peoples, and with them, necessarily, a pretension to eternity ... On the foundation of love for one's own people, there lurks the presentiment that at some time in the distant future, this people no longer will exist, and this presentiment lends a sweetly poignant gravity. But in any event, the thought of the necessary eternity of the people is there, and, strong or weak, it has an effect. [2]
Rosenzweig makes the striking observation that precisely because the Christian peoples have come to believe in their own eternity, and cannot accept the idea that they will be exterminated, as the ancient peoples did, their concept of war changes radically. War raises the possibility of the destruction of the people, continued Rosenzweig, and for just this reason it becomes a religious event. The ancient peoples fought wars, but the center of their civic life was the official cult, with its rites and sacrifices. For modern Christian peoples convinced of their own Election, war itself becomes the supreme act of collective religion.Â 

This was written during World War I by a serving German soldier, and uncannily describes the quasi-religious attitude that the European nations brought to the war.

Mercifully, Rosenzweig died in 1929, before the triumph of National Socialism. But his sociology of religion would have recognized in Adolf Hitler's "Master Race" a Satanic parody of Election, and in the Aryan claim on eternity, the existential terror before the prospect of extinction. 

Sharansky wants to fall back on old-fashioned national identity, yet in Europe, national identities were not a sui generis expression of ancient culture and ethnicity. On the contrary, as Rosenzweig reports, Christianity turned European national identity into a parody of Israel's Election. Europe was only half-Christianized. Christianity - at least in its Western, Catholic or Protestant manifestation - demands that the individual repudiate the sinful flesh of his Gentile origin, and by water and the Spirit be reborn into a new people, that is, the People of Israel. From the (Western) Christian perspective, God's promise to Abraham remains valid: it is simply that Christ's sacrifice on the Cross makes possible the miraculous rebirth of each individual Christian into Israel. 

The trouble with European nationalism is that the Europeans did not want to be saved by repudiating their Gentile flesh and joining Israel of the Spirit, namely the Church. On the contrary, they wanted to be Elected, that is, accorded eternal life, but in their own French, German, Italian or Ukrainian skins. That is the not-so-secret source of anti-Semitism. All European nationalism is hostile to Israel, for the existence of Israel stands as a reproach to the pathetic pretensions of each European nation to immortality. In its most extreme form, namely Hitler's, the obsession takes hold of the existentially challenged nation that in order for it to be the Chosen People, the original Chosen People must be exterminated. 

European national identity is dead and gone for tragic reasons, which is to say very good ones, and the thin broth of European cosmopolitanism that bubbles in its place is not a substitute so much as tasteless residue. When the dogs no longer want to live forever, they don't trouble to have puppies, and in a few generations the problem resolves itself through depopulation and ruin.

It was the genius of John Paul II, the last great hero of Christian Europe, the pope who brought down communism, to understand that the true Europe needed Israel. Not the Europe of the peoples, but the Europe of the universal Church, required the living presence of Israel as the exemplar of a People of God, and John Paul II declared God's Covenant with the Jewish people to be eternally valid, and instituted diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. 

Sharansky's sympathy towards an old-fashioned European patriotism that never existed in the way he portrays it, and died a hideous but well-deserved death during the 20th century, stems from another motive. The legitimacy of the Jewish state is under attack by enemies who claim that the world has moved beyond the national state altogether.

At the conclusion of his book, Sharansky at last quotes the critic whose attacks on Israel well may have motivated the book, Professor Tony Judt of New York University. In an often-cited 1993 New York Review of Books essay, Judt denounced the fact that Israel "is an ethnic majority defined by language, or religion, or antiquity, or all three at the expense of inconvenient local minorities", in which "Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges", which do not belong in "a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law". 

Judt wants the dissolution of the Jewish state into a bi-national state with the Palestinians. Long a utopian fancy among such leftists as the late Martin Buber, the bi-national state has become the core strategy of the Palestinians. Rather than conclude a two-state agreement with Israel, the Palestinians hope to drag things on until demographics and the world's impatience with the running sore in the Middle East give them the majority in a reconstituted Palestine. That is a serious danger, not merely a utopian project, and Sharansky is right to be alarmed about it.

His practical conclusions, though, seem quite odd. He argues that democracy will solve the problem, although it is hard to understand why. Hamas came to power in Gaza through democratic elections, and Hezbollah's power in Lebanon was enhanced by democracy. Israel's nemesis, Iran's missile-rattling President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, won democratic elections.

On the other hand, Sharansky denounces the "authoritarian Chinese regime that seems the smallest expression of identity as a threat to its rule" and "brutally represses Tibetans, Uyghurs and others". The fact that China has deep concerns regarding the intentions of Muslim radicals among the Uyghurs in its far west is of enormous strategic benefit to Israel, however. China has no particular sympathy for Israel, but Israel and China have a common enemy.

On the other hand, Israel's involvement with the Georgian cause against Russia (including the prominent role of Israeli advisors in the ill-fated Georgian army) may be one of the stupidest things the Jewish state has done since its founding. Russia appears to view Israeli missile defense as part of the overall American effort to encircle Russia with anti-missile systems in Poland, the Czech Republic, and so forth, and may retaliate by selling sophisticated anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems to Syria and Iran.

Sharansky has every right to detest Vladimir Putin, given his suffering at the hands of Soviet state security, but he is apocalyptically wrong to complain that the United States has not done enough to strengthen Georgia, Lithuania and Ukraine against Russia. Russia is in a position to do enormous harm to Israel if it chooses to ally itself with Israel's enemies, and well may do so if it perceives that Israel has joined the United States in placing pressure on its borders. That, pardon the expression, could lead to a disaster of Biblical proportions. 

Sharansky's mistaken view of identity does nothing to temper this writer's pessimism concerning Israel's strategic position. Perhaps God wants to call attention to Israel's Election by making the Jewish state depend on His miraculous intervention, rather than on its own good sense.

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - ramana - 10-26-2008

NY Times Commentary on Freud's Moses and Monotheism

LINK

One can very well take Freud's arguments and compare it to what Hinduism has conceptualized. Hindus have done much more with so many Gods. So there is something not right.

Full text:

Moses and Monotheism

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - dhu - 10-27-2008

Did Freud originate the monotheistic Atenism in Egypt thesis? Is this another case of the back-projection of a monotheistic sensibility on a separate phenomenon. Freud has been adequately explained as transforming Buddhist insights on perception and reality into Psychoanalytic theology. Freud had a fascination with Hannibal as the last assertion of the ANE, before being fatally eclipsed by the Greco-Romans..

The Egyptian Moses thesis has been explored by some Egyptian author as well.

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - ramana - 10-27-2008

What is ANE? There is something at the core which is needed to be understood. Moses brought in stuff to make the Jews exclusive and imposed his harsh commandements as edicts from god. These were continued and enhanced by latter "Prophets".

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - shamu - 10-28-2008

I saw following movie ad in a newspaper website
The God Who Wasn't There

Bowling for Columbine did it to the gun culture.

Super Size Me did it to fast food.

Now The God Who Wasn't There does it to religion.

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In this critically acclaimed film, you will discover:

The early founders of Christianity seem wholly unaware of the idea of a human Jesus

The Jesus of the Gospels bears a striking resemblance to other ancient heroes and the figureheads of pagan savior cults

Contemporary Christians are largely ignorant of the origins of their religion

Fundamentalism is as strong today as it ever has been, with an alarming 44% of Americans believing that Jesus will return to earth in their lifetimes
From exposing the hidden history of Christianity to lampooning the bloody excesses of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (which caused Gibson to attempt legal action against the documentary), The God Who Wasn't There pulls no punches.

Directed by award-winning filmmaker (and former Christian) Brian Flemming, The God Who Wasn't There includes stimulating interviews with:

Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation

Robert M. Price, Jesus Seminar fellow and author of The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man

Alan Dundes, Professor of Folklore at the University of California at Berkeley

Richard Carrier, historian and author of Sense and Goodness Without God

Barbara & David P. Mikkelson, authors of the Urban Legends Reference Pages at snopes.com

And many others
Dazzling motion graphics and a driving soundtrack propel this uncompromising film that the Los Angeles Times calls "provocative - to put it mildly."

Special Features

The special features on this DVD are both generous and carefully selected. As DVD Talk puts it: "This DVD delivers the film in a quality presentation, with extras that quadruple the amount of content in a positive way with no filler."

The superb commentary tracks on this DVD are not the usual "making of" chat but instead consist of original material that director Brian Flemming crafted to deepen the experience of The God Who Wasn't There. The two separate tracks are:

"The Atheists." This lively track features evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion). Topics discussed by this towering atheist figure range from the horrors committed in the name of God to the power of science to combat "religion and all other forms of superstition." Relevant audio from other interviewees is also woven into this timely and candid examination of irrational beliefs.

"The Scholar." This track delves deep into the Jesus Myth hypothesis with pioneering scholar Earl Doherty (The Jesus Puzzle). If you are intrigued by the possibility that Jesus Christ did not exist at all, you will find this audio track fascinating. Doherty has been studying for decades the evidence that mainstream academics are only beginning to discover. Prepare to be astounded.
The DVD also includes more than one hour of additional interviews on video. These illuminating extended clips did not make it into the fast-paced main feature, but many viewers nonetheless highlight them as a favorite part of the DVD. Topics include:

The Rapture. Soft-spoken Rapture-believer Scott Butcher explains why he is certain that everything in the Book of Revelation is about to come true. (However, he is unable to explain where he got the idea that all airlines have a rule that at least one pilot in the cockpit must be a non-Christian, lest both pilots be Raptured at once while the plane is in flight.)

Legend. Barbara and David P. Mikkelson, the creators of Snopes.com, discuss the creepy lessons behind a certain urban legend popular among Christians.

What God wants. Philosopher Richard Carrier performs a thought experiment in which he asks, if there is a God, what does he want? The results are both hilarious and difficult to dispute.

Who needs God to be good? Author Sam Harris disputes the notion that morality has any relationship to dogma.

And many more.
We'll let DVD Talk describe one more special feature on this packed DVD: "There's an excellent slide show titled 'Explore the Myth,' which looks at the stories about Jesus and traces them throughout time, examining their effect right up through today's dangerous extremist conservatism, which has left America fractured. Viewing the slide show on DVD-ROM [any Windows or Mac computer with a DVD drive] will open Web sites related to the material."

And there's even more compelling material for you to discover on your own...

This DVD is sure to be a valued contribution to your DVD collection. Many buyers report watching it again and again, showing it to friends, and always finding something new and fascinating with each viewing.

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - Shambhu - 10-28-2008

Great DVD to have..I don't have it, but I need to keep it ready, so I can pop it into the player whenever Good News people come knocking, and invite them to join me in a pleasurable screening..

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - acharya - 11-05-2008

QUOTEThe debates in the US are not like those between pagans of Antiquity
and Ancient Christianity. But there are debating secularized variants
of the question "Who is a true Christian?"

>
> America will elect a new President on Nov 4, 2008.
>
> On the campaign trail, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah
> Palin has differentiated between those parts of the country that
> (she says) are "pro-America" and those that are "anti-America."
>
> Presidential candidate John McCain's brother spoke in Virginia
> recently, (a traditionally Republican state, now evenly balanced for
> the first time in recent Presidential elections, to the surprise of
> many), where he referred to the "real Virginia" as those who favored
> Republicans while declaring the northern Virginia folks
> as "communist" and not belonging to the "real Virginia."
>
> There have been other allusions to "real Americans" and those
> Americans who are apparently not "real".
>
> I found this to be an interesting pattern.
>
> Identifying a "Real" versus "False" Virginia is reminiscent of
> Christianity identifying "real" versus "false" religions when it
> confronted other cultures. Not surprisingly, in the present
> campaign, the distinction of "real" versus "false" (Americans,
> Virginias, etc) is coming from the Christian right as it confronts
> opposition to its political ends.
>
> It's interesting to see Balu's Chapter 2 playing out here on
> national TV.


Obamaâs âRace Speechâ as Neoslave Narrative

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - dhu - 11-06-2008

QUOTE(acharya @ Nov 5 2008, 07:35 AM)
Obamaâs âRace Speechâ as Neoslave Narrative
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Actually, the Obama phenomenon is a case study in the genesis of Prophetism. The monotheistic messiah always advocates capitulation to the colonial power and normalizes any dissonance stemming from the colonial project.

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - dhu - 11-06-2008

QUOTE....

Another example, pointing towards the west, the "tragedy in history": Here
Flemming Nielsen's book is very important as he does not jump to any early
conclusion but shows the structural similarity between the Deuteronomistic
history and Herodotus (I agree with Clancy when he objects to the obsession with
Herodotus, when Livy is much closer [and the best example of Hellenistic --
well, Hellenistic inspired Roman historiography. However, biblical scholars
traditionally go for the earliest possible date.])

As to history and literature, it is quite interesting to see this insistence of
a priority for the OT. Somehow a comprehensive part of biblical scholarship
cannot see the importance of the quantum leap that happened in Attica in the 5th
century but claim something similar to belong to the Iron Age, to Palestine, to
tiny Jerusalem. Have a look of the two cultures, and you immediately see the
difference: on one side a blossoming self-content culture exploding in al areas
and aspects: Art (e.g. Phidias), philosophy (the Sophists, Plato), literature
(Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes), historiography (Herodotus,
Thucydides), and economy, and on the other one of the poorest material cultures
ever found in the ME with no art worth mentioning, no international economic
explosion, nothing. I do not say that it might not have happened, but as it
seems there was no context for it. Either the borrowing was from Egypt and/or
Mesopotamia, although the genre of historiography belongs to the 4th century at
the earliest, and definitely was inspired by the Greek historiographers, or it
was from Greece, or both, and then we are down in a time when Greek influence
was heavily felt in the ME, and when was that.

..

Niels Peter Lemche

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - dhu - 11-07-2008

QUOTE(ramana @ Oct 27 2008, 10:48 PM)What is ANE? There is something at the core which is needed to be understood. Moses brought in stuff to make the Jews exclusive and imposed his harsh commandements as edicts from god. These were continued and enhanced by latter "Prophets".
[right][snapback]89528[/snapback][/right]


ANE is Ancient Near East.

>>> imposed his harsh commandements as edicts from god. >>>

The Edicts are imposed by the colonial power but as a false flag operation. This arrangement isolates the colonial power from scrutiny.

>>> These were continued and enhanced by latter "Prophets". >>>

" according to Lemche, that the Torah is not ancient, but archaizing. "

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - G.Subramaniam - 11-07-2008

As we peel the onion
The historicity of jesus is false

next the historicity of Old Testament is false

I believe that the earliest Jewish Old Testament was first written in greek in 200 BC

The entire OT is false for the period before 700 BC
It is simply a pious fraud of extrapolation

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - Shambhu - 11-07-2008

Some researchers say the OT was written as a retrofit to the NT....

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - agnivayu - 11-07-2008

Abrahamic religions have extensive Egyptian influence. Remember the whole concept of monotheism comes from a Egyptian Pharaoh, Akhenaten. He insisted that they worship only the "Sun" God. Note the Sun God connection. Jesus is the Celtic Sun God, he is worshiped ("born") at Christmas time, which is the date of the Winter Solstice from 2000 years ago.

Other strange connections...Hammurabi got this code of laws in the form of a tablet from the mountaintop from the Sun God (Absurdly similar to Moses and the 10 commandments).

Isis and Horus from Egypt is the same as Madonna and Child. Note also, that the monotheists put heavy emphasis on the body (rise from the dead etc) and ban cremation. Very similar to Egyptians who spent a lot of time and effort in preserving the body. This is very different than early European or Hindu customs or cremating.

Read further:

In the catacombs at Rome are pictures of the baby Horus being held by the virgin mother Isis, the original "Madonna and Child.

Jesus as a reincarnation of Horus
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/origen046.html

QUOTE(Shambhu @ Nov 7 2008, 09:06 AM)Some researchers say the OT was written as a retrofit to the NT....
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Historicity of Jesus - 2 - Shambhu - 11-07-2008

Thanks Pandyan..

Also, this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=499qXcMhTM8

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - ramana - 11-07-2008

There is a HDTV program by InFocus on Pagan Christ. Anyone seen it?

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - dhu - 11-08-2008

x-post

QUOTE(ramana @ Nov 8 2008, 01:46 AM)H.G. Wells in his "Outline History of the World" speculates that the Jewish people in various parts of the ancient world were actually Phoenicians. Very fascinating article where in the root Panis- means Vanij or merchants. And Phoenicians were the number one traders.
[right][snapback]89895[/snapback][/right]


Didn't we come across this point earlier in the thread? The same conclusion can be arrived at by assuming Jews as the remnant victims of the Phoenician defeat. It is said that Hannibal was educated by Jews. This is a roundabout and tongue-in-cheek way of saying that Hannibal was decisively defeated and his descendants became Jews. The Jews suffer through history while the Greco-Roman colonials "make history". The origin of Theology (ie Monotheism or Organized Religion or Orthodoxy or Right Belief) has to be investigated in this sequence of events. Having Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Akhenaten, and so on, as fellow Monotheists is part of the subterfuge and diversion. Theology is a more comprehensive entity than mere iconoclasm, erasing history of the preceding ruler, one god, and so on. Even Balagandhara gives a precedence to the colonial aspect of theology (although he states that Religion/Theology is not strictly dependent on a colonial relationship).....

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - dhu - 11-08-2008

QUOTE(agnivayu @ Nov 7 2008, 09:27 AM)Abrahamic religions have extensive Egyptian influence.Â Remember the whole concept of monotheism comes from a Egyptian Pharaoh, Akhenaten.Â
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IMO, we cannot immediately condemn Egyptians/Jews as originatiing the theological phenomenon. Same arguments have been used against Zoroastrian"ism", Vedanta, Buddh"ism", Sikhi, and so on. These latter cases are definitely back-projections and selective viewing of Orthopraxic traditions through an Orthodox lens. Also, we do not gain anything by condemning these non-entities of Judaism and Atenism, while the real (western) colonial project remains unscrutinized.

Historicity of Jesus - 2 - dhu - 11-08-2008

QUOTE(G.Subramaniam @ Nov 7 2008, 09:01 AM)As we peel the onion

I believe that the earliest Jewish Old Testament was first written in greek in 200 BC

The entire OT is false for the period before 700 BC
It is simply a pious fraud of extrapolation
[right][snapback]89861[/snapback][/right]


Please provide maximum details. The Greek Septuagint (LXX) preceding the Hebrew Primary History is referred by Wesselius. Gmirkin gives another account of an authorship at Alexandria. How is the so-called Persian period implicated? Ezra? nehemiah? As their ship goes asunder, they will try to drag in persians and by extension Indians as well.