The Strategy for Mythicists Going Forward

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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stephan happy huller
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The Strategy for Mythicists Going Forward

Post by stephan happy huller »

I have been informally corresponding with two rather prominent 'mythicists' and I have come to several conclusions many of which I think my find broad disagreement with people here at the forum. The first is that the name 'Jesus' is still a problem for those who want to argue that the founder of Christianity was something other than a human being. Even if you argue that the gospel story was made up you are left with a made up story about a man rather than a god. You have to argue for a Christian religion developed out of a pastiche of Jewish scriptural references which oddly chose to name a divine being with a common Jewish name. Didn't happen that way.

So it is that I continue to press for the adoption of following the path of the name 'Jesus' to something else, something divine. What caught my eye today is the Arabic form of the name Jesus which begins with the letter ayn. Luxenburg and his Syriac origin for the Quran is perhaps its strongest when there is some corroboration for his readings already in the Arabic lexicographical tradition. Luxenberg does a very convincing job of explaining the Qur’anic forms of the names for Jesus and Moses. According to Luxenberg, the name of Jesus ﻋﻴﺴﻰ is best explained on the basis of its similarity to Jesse (with the final ﻯ as ay), given the East Syrian tendency for initial ‘Ayin to disappear into initial glottal stop (the equivalence of ‘Ayin and initial glottal stop before a vowel is remarked upon in connection both with Mandaean and with East Syriac). The two names may thus have been confused.

But it is what he says about the development of the name is especially profound with respect to the specific Mandaean background to the interchange between ayn and alef and ayn and yod:

http://books.google.com/books?id=227Gha ... us&f=false

To this end, I think the specific Mandaean form of Jesus's name ayn-shin-waw or ‘šu is a development of the name of Jesus which appears on Levene's Jewish Aramaic bowl from the same region:

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4 ... 3594953811

The implication of this is quite interesting. If the ayn in the Mandaean form of Jesus's name was a substitution for the aleph or aleph yod in Ishu then the current Mandaean savior 'Enosh' was a substitution for the original cosmic Jesus at a period where the Mandaean community no longer wanted to be considered Christian. Enosh after all means 'man' and so does Ish. I think the parallels may well be the start of a new tactic in the argument in favor of a supernatural Jesus.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The Strategy for Mythicists Going Forward

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But if Jason can be the name of a miraculous healer and one who returned from the dead . . . . http://vridar.org/category/book-reviews ... he-healer/ . . . . The name applies to the one who came to represent humanity (as per high priests like one of prophetic symbolism named Joshua), after all, so is I'm not sure if the name would necessarily have been problematic for such a figure.

I'd like to hear a little more argument before assuming that the name is problematic for such a divinity.
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Re: The Strategy for Mythicists Going Forward

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Robert Tulip has attempted to ram foreign traditions of 'astrotheology' into the Biblical texts. I think assuming that the Mandaeans are a surviving form of Marcionitism has more going for it. The Marcionite interest or veneration of a 'dog star' is well attested. http://books.google.com/books?id=6j-fDx ... ar&f=false As you can see most people just assumed the 'dog star' must have been Sirius, but that's complete crap. It doesn't say that anywhere in the text. Indeed the only thing that is there is 'dog' and 'spirit' or 'wind.'

I had another problem developing my theory insofar as the star called Ash (עָ֭שׁ) or Aish (עַ֗יִשׁ) in Job 9:9 and 38:32 with the figure of אּישׁ. The substitution of ayin for aleph assist this to no small degree but the translated texts always associated עָ֭שׁ or עַ֗יִשׁ with the Great Bear which didn't seem to make sense with the dog star references.

But when I read that the Mandaeans were recorded starting their year with a ceremony directed at the Great Bear and Polaris (the North Star) in the Little Bear I could make my way through a possible explanation. First the report about the Mandaeans published in the London Standard of 19th October, 1894 under the headline "A Prayer Meeting of the Star Worshippers", and later included in Robert Brown's Researches into the Origin of the Primitive Constellations of the Greeks, Phoenicians and Babylonians (Brown, 1900, 177-179) which makes reference to their construction and use of a cult hut called the "Mishkna", referred to also as the bit manda or bit mashkna:
The side walls run from north to south, and are not more than seven feet high. Two windows, or rather openings for windows, are left east and west, and space for a door is made on the southern side, so that the priest, when entering the edifice, has the North Star, the great object of their adoration, immediately facing him. . . . Towards midnight the star- worshippers, men and women, come slowly down to the Mishkna by the river side. . . . By midnight there are some twenty rows of these white-robed figures, ranked in orderly array facing the Mishkna, and awaiting the coming of the priests. A couple of tarmidos, lamp in hand, guard the entry to the tabernacle, and keep their eyes fixed upon the pointers of the Great Bear. As soon as these attain the position indicating midnight/ a signal is given, and a procession of priests, including ' the spiritual head of the sect, the Ganzivro,' moves to the Mishkna.

One 'deacon' 'holds aloft the large wooden tau-cross/ a second bears ' the sacred scriptures of the Star- worshippers/ a third 'carries two live pigeons in a cage/ and a fourth has ' a measure of barley and of sesame seeds.' The ecclesiastics file into the Mishkna, and stand ' to right and left, leaving the Ganzivro standing alone in the centre, in front of the earthen altar facing the North Star, Polaris. The sacred book Sidra Rabba is laid upon the altar folded back where the liturgy of the living is divided from the ritual of the dead. The high priest ' takes a live pigeon, c extends his hands towards the Polar Star, upon which he fixes his eyes, and lets the bird fly, calling aloud, " In the name of the living one, blessed be the primitive light, the ancient light, the Divinity self-created." ' The worshippers without, on hearing these words, ' rise and prostrate themselves upon the ground towards the North Star, on which they have silently been gazing/ ' The Ganzivro, who has made a complete renunciation of the world, and is regarded as one dead and in the realms of the blessed/ after the celebration of a kind of communion in which small cakes, sprinkled with the blood of the second pigeon are partaken of, recites a further service, * ever directing his prayers towards the North Star, on which the gaze of the worshippers outside continues fixed throughout the whole of the ceremonial observances. This star is called Olma d'nhoora, literally " the world of light," the primitive sun of the Star- worshippers' theogony, the paradise of the elect, and the abode of the pious hereafter/ Such is the honour still paid to Dayan-same (' The Judge-of-heaven/ Vide Vol. I. 264) in the land of Sumir and Akkad. https://archive.org/details/researchesintoo01browgoog
Now given that the Mandaean's venerated the Great Bear and the North Star how do we reconcile this with the Marcionite interest in a 'dog star'? The answer is plainly visible at the Wikipedia page entry for Polaris:
One ancient name for Polaris was Cynosūra, from the Greek κυνόσουρα "the dog’s tail" (reflecting a time when the constellation of Ursa Minor "Little Bear" was taken to represent a dog), whence the English word cynosure. Most other names are directly tied to its role as pole star. In English, it was known as "pole star" or "north star", in Spenser also "steadfast star". An older English name, attested since the 14th century, is lodestar "guiding star", cognate with the Old Norse leiðarstjarna, Middle High German leitsterne. Use of the name Polaris in English dates to the 17th century. It is an ellipsis for the Latin stella polaris "pole star". Another Latin name is stella maris "sea-star", from an early time also used as a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary, popularized in the hymn Ave Maris Stella (8th century).
Most studies in Marcionitism (and myself included) simply assumed that the Marcionites 'must have' venerated Sirius the dog star. This understanding make far greater sense because of the repeated 'mariner' association with Marcion too. At once, 'the dog star' was used by mariners to sail hence the reference to Marcion as a naucleros.

Still working on this one ...
Last edited by stephan happy huller on Wed Apr 02, 2014 1:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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stephan happy huller
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Re: The Strategy for Mythicists Going Forward

Post by stephan happy huller »

Hi Neil

I don't know what more there is to say than what I said. Robert Kraft (*cough*) once argued that Joshua was a messianic name among the Samaritans. It is not (despite what one sixth century Alexandrian bishop said). Jews and Samaritans never named themselves after angels until the Khazhars I suspect and angels were never named after people. The gods or angels never have human names. That's just the way it is.
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stephan happy huller
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Re: The Strategy for Mythicists Going Forward

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Here is a fuller account of the ceremony (with confirmation among contemporaries about the accuracy of the reporting):

http://books.google.com/books?id=vzS2AA ... 22&f=false

I know the Mandaeans and the Manichaean cosmologies understand the 'north' to be the place where heaven is. It might also explain why Tertullian begins his discussion of the Marcionites with an identification of them as savage 'Scythians' (i.e. the inhabitants of the northern-most place in the world). Why he was of Pontus too.
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Re: The Strategy for Mythicists Going Forward

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stephan happy huller wrote: ... the name 'Jesus' is still a problem for those who want to argue that the founder of Christianity was something other than a human being.
Given the name is likely a modification of an older name of an older theology - Joshua from Judaism - and means anointed savior; that's kind of a strawman, red-herring combined fallacy.
stephan happy huller wrote:Even if you argue that the gospel story was made up you are left with a made up story about a man rather than a god. You have to argue for a Christian religion developed out of a pastiche of Jewish scriptural references which oddly chose to name a divine being with a common Jewish name. Didn't happen that way.
It is almost certain the "Christian religion developed out of a pastiche of Jewish scriptural references", so why not have a narrative about a divine [human-god] being with a common Jewish name.

It seems likely the Gospels are onset set of stories developed via a different path to the one that developed the Pauline epistles: if they are salvage stories, they are still stories. No point in trying to read any more into them than that.
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Blood
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Re: The Strategy for Mythicists Going Forward

Post by Blood »

The Philippians Hymn demonstrates that they didn't think "Jesus" was merely an ordinary Jewish name.
“The only sensible response to fragmented, slowly but randomly accruing evidence is radical open-mindedness. A single, simple explanation for a historical event is generally a failure of imagination, not a triumph of induction.” William H.C. Propp
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Re: The Strategy for Mythicists Going Forward

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One possibility is that early believers did something similar to Justin Martyr:
“Moreover, in the book of Exodus we have also perceived that the name of God Himself which, He says, was not revealed to Abraham or to Jacob, was Jesus, and was declared mysteriously through Moses. Thus it is written: ‘And the Lord spake to Moses, Say to this people, Behold, I send My angel before thy face, to keep thee in the way, to bring thee into the land which I have prepared for thee. Give heed to Him, and obey Him; do not disobey Him. For He will not draw back from you; for My name is in Him.’ Now understand that He who led your fathers into the land is called by this name Jesus,...
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stephan happy huller
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Re: The Strategy for Mythicists Going Forward

Post by stephan happy huller »

Nah, Justin Martyr's Dialogue was clearly reworked in the late second century by Irenaeus. There are clear references to a geographic designation for Arabia which only came into existence at the time of Septimius Severus. And Blood's reference to Philippians only says that the nomen sacrum interpreted as 'Jesus' was the name above all names. I only see the standard Greek transliteration of אּישׁ.
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stephan happy huller
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Re: The Strategy for Mythicists Going Forward

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It is almost certain the "Christian religion developed out of a pastiche of Jewish scriptural references", so why not have a narrative about a divine [human-god] being with a common Jewish name.
But what kind of nutty people would care so much to build a narrative around Jewish scripture but be completely ignorant or ignore Jewish attitudes toward the sacredness of names. Impossible. It's the same as 'I like lobster' 'I like peanut butter' but there will never be a spreadable 'lobster peanut butter.' They don't go together.
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