Murdock on Justin Martyr’s Admission of Parallels

D.M. Murdock, Christ in Egypt, pp 517-19:


Regarding this matter of precedence for parallels, Witt advocated proceeding with caution, but was also certain that the Egyptian religion influenced Christianity, remarking:

“Historians, generally, and specifically those who trace the development of
religious ideas, need to avoid the trap of confusing the chronological order
with cause and effect: post hoc ergo propter hoc. On the other hand, the veneration (hyperdulia) of the Blessed
Virgin Mary was certainly introduced at about the same time Theodosius ordered
the destruction of pagan temples, including the Serapeum and other shrines of the Egyptian
gods. Here, we may think, lies a reason for the absorption of elements, ideas and
usages from the old religion into the new.”

As can be seen, the evident borrowing by Christianity continued well into the common era, during Theodosius’s time in the fourth century. Thus, simply because borrowing occurred during the “Christian era” does not mean it was by Paganism from Christianity. Again, what is designated as the “Christian era” did not descend suddenly upon the entire world after the year 1 AD/CE but is relative, and to this day there remains places that are still pre-Christian, showing no knowledge of or influence by Christianity.

In capitulating to the fact there are indeed very serious correspondences between the Egyptian and christian religions, apologists insist that these motifs can only be found dating to the middle of the second century at the earliest. When Justin Marty discussed them in detail, thereby supposedly showing that Paganism must have borrowed from Christianity. In the first place, this present work reveals otherwise, as practically everything significant within Christianity existed in one form or another in the Egyptian religion long before the common era, much of it revolving around the characters of Osiris, Isis and Horus.


Moreover, in his First Apology (54) Justin specifically claims these parallels, including the Greek god Bacchus/Dionysus’s ascension into heaven, as well the virgin birth and ascension of Perseus, were the result of “the devil” anticipating Christ’s story:

“For having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that Christ was to come…
[the wicked demons] put forward many to be called sons of Jupiter, under the
impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things
which were said
with regard to Christ were mere marvelous tales, like the things which were said
by the poets.”

(Roberts, A., ANCL, II, 53-54)

In chapter 56 of his Apology, Justin pointedly states that the “evil spirits” were making their mischief “before Christ’s appearance.” (Roberts, A., ANCL, II, 55) In other words, Justin — and others using the same “devil did it” excuse, such as Tertullian and Lactantius — did not dishonestly deny the parallels, as have many modern apologists.” Indeed, these early Church fathers happily used these correspondences in their polemics and apologies to make Christianity appear less ridiculous — and ridiculous it evidently was perceived to be by the educated Greeks and Romans of the time. To these latter groups, the gospel story could not have been any more “real” or “historical” than that of Apollo or Neptune, and surely doubted Christ’s existence as a “historical” figure in ancient times. Moreover, nowhere does Justin Martyr claim that the Pagans copied Christianity after Christ’s alleged advent, which he certainly would have done, had the copying occurred in that direction.


It is obvious from Justin’s “devil got there first” excuse that these mythical motifs existed before Christ’s purported manifestation on Earth and that there were those n his time who sensibly questioned the historical veracity of the gospel story, essentially calling it “mere marvelous tales” – in other words, a myth. In Dialogue with Trypho (69), in fact, Justin again invokes the “devil got there first” argument, specifically stating that these Pagan “counterfeits” were likewise “wrought by the Magi in Egypt.” (Roberts, A. ANCL, II, 184) Now, which “counterfeits” and “Magi” would these be? The “Magi” must be the Egyptian Priests, apparently called as such by people of Justin’s era, while the “counterfeits” must refer to at least some of the Egyptian gods. Justin also specifically names the Greek gods Dionysus, Hercules, and Asclepius as those whose “fables” were emulated by the devil in anticipating Christ. As we have seen, these gods have their counterparts in Egyptian mythology as well, in Osiris and Horus, as prime examples.

Faith of the Early Apologists

Acharya S (aka D.M. Murdock), The Christ Conspiracy

pp 24.25:

Indeed, the story of Jesus as presented in the gospels, mass of impossibilities and contradictions that it is, has been so difficult to believe that even the fanatic Christian “doctor” and saint, Augustine (384- 430), admitted, “I should not believe in the truth of the Gospels unless the authority of the Catholic Church forced me to do so.” Nevertheless, the “monumentally superstitious and credulous Child of faith” Augustine must not have been too resistant, because he already accepted “as historic truth the fabulous founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, their virgin birth by the god Mars, and their nursing by a she-wolf…”

Apparently unable to convince himself rationally of the validity of his faith, early Church Father Tertullian (c. 160-200) made the notorious statement “Credo quia incredibilis — I believe because it is unbelievable.” An “ex-Pagan,” Tertullian vehemently and irrationally defendedhis new faith, considered fabricated by other Pagans, by acknowledging that Christianity was a “shameful thing” and “monstrously absurd”:

“… I mean that the Son of God was born; why am I not ashamed of maintaining such a thing? Why! but because it is itself a shameful thing. I maintain that the Son of God died; well, that is wholly credible because it is monstrously absurd. I maintain that after having been buried, he rose again; and that I take to be absolutely true, because it was manifestly impossible.”

Early Apologists Speaking Honestly

"The Religion proclaimed by him to All Nations was neither New nor Strange."

~ Bishop Eusebius (264-c.340 AD/CE), The History of the Church (2:4)


"For what is now called the Christian religion existed of old and was never absent from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh. Then true religion which already existed began to be called Christian."

~ St. Augustine (354-430 AD/CE), Retractiones (1:13)

Tarnas on Agustine’s Anti-intellectualism

I own The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas. I don’t normally read books about history except when they directly relate to religion, but this is a good book. It covers a lot of territory and sometimes I wish the author would go more deeply into certain aspects. Besides that minor complaint, the author does manage to capture some central streams of development. He spends a decent amount of time on Christianity and the Roman Empire, and that is why I was looking at it recently.

The following excerpt is about Augustine and the early Christian attitude toward science and rationality.

pp 113-14: Moreover, in the new self-awareness of the late classical and early Christian era, most acutely epitomized in Augustine, the individual soul’s concern for its spiritual destiny was far more significant than the rational intellect’s concern with conceptual thnking or empirical study. Faith alone in the miracle of Christ’s redemption was enough to bring the deepest saving truth to man. Despite his erudition and appreciation for the intellectual and scientific achievement of the Greeks, Augustine proclaimed:

“When, then, the question is asked what we are to believe in regrd to religion, it is not necessary to probe into the nature of things, as was done by those whom the Greeks call physici; nor need we be in alarm lest the Christian shoud be ignorant of the force and thenumber of the elemetns; the motion, and order, and eclipses of the heavenly bodies; the form of the heavens; the species and natures of animals, plants, stones, fountains, rivers, mountains; about chronology and distances; the signs of coming storms; and a thousand other things which those philosophers either have found out, or think they have found out…. It is enough for the christian to believe that the only cause of all created things, whether heavenly or earthly, whether visible or invisible, is the goodness of the Creator, the one true God; and that nothing exists but Himself that does not derive its existence from him.” (Enchiridion, in Augustine, Works, vol. 9, edited by M. Dods; Edinburgh (Edinburgh; Clark, 1871-77), 180-181.)

With the rise of Christianity, the already decadent state of science in the late Roman era received little encouragement for new developments. Early Christians experienced no intellectual urgency to “save the phenomena” of this world, since the phenomenal world held no significance compared with the transcendent spiritual reality. More precisely, the all-redeeming Christ had already saved the phenomena, so there was little need for mathematics or astronomy to perform the task. The study of astornomy in particular, being tied to astrology and the cosmic religion of the Hellenistic era, was discouraged. The monotheistic Hebrews had already had occasion to condemn foreign astrologers, and this attitude persisted in the Christian context. with its planetary deities, annd aura of polytheistic paganism, and with its proneness to a determinism antithetical to both divine grace and human responsibility, astrology was officially condemned by Church councils (with Augustine especially seeing the need for confuting the astrological “mathematicians”), as a result of which it gradually declined despite its occasional theological defenders. In the Christian view, the heavens were devoutly perceived as the expression of God’s glory and, more popularly, as the abode of God and his angels and saints, and the realm from which Christ would return at the Second Coming.

Even though this gives good context, I think Tarnas missed the heart of the matter. Augustine didn’t prize human responsibility above all else, and not all ancient astrology was deterministic (and certainly no more deterministic than Augustine’s theology). Early Christians were anti-intellectual (in particular towards astrology) because too much analysis would prove Christianity’s indebtedness to other religions and philosophies.

In seeming contradiction with what Augustine said in the above quote, he had also written that when the scriptures conflict with science that the believer should give authority to the latter. But I imagine that he was mostly thinking of the Old Testament when he wrote this. Augustine was fine with interpreting allegorically such scriptures as Genesis. However, his scientific education was surely rather limited and I doubt he ever considered the possibility that science might one day develop so far as to demonstrate the impossibility (i.e., reasonable doubt) of dead people resurrecting and other miracles.

What I find intriguing here is how Augustine correlated Paganism with rationality, science and basically any interest in the world whatsoever. He dismisses all of this as being irrelevant to Christianity. This is extremely significant because to this day orthodox Christianity still has a troubled relationship with rationality and science. The sad part here is that so many Christians over the centuries have perceived a non-existent conflict. Augustine says that all a Christian needs to know is that all things were created by a good Creator. Was he so clueless as to not realize that one could worship both the Creator and his Creation? Was he utterly ignorant of the fact that some Pagans (and some Gnostic Christians) did worship both the Creator and his Creation? I’m reminded of Augustine’s distinction between the sun and the Creator of the sun. He was implying that Pagans hadn’t made this distinction when, for example, the Egyptians had made this precise distinction.

And this isn’t just a theological issue. It was because Christians felt so little interest towards rationality and science that they didn’t realize the great intellectual tradition they were losing. In fact, as Augustine wrote about this subject in 420, the Catholic Church was in the process of destroying all knowledge it could get its hands on. How could a great intellectual like Augustine be so indifferent? Was he so cynical about the world that he was contented to see the Church (and the whole Roman Empire with it) commit intellectual suicide? Was he hoping this wholesale destruction would hasten the Second Coming or something?

The Non-Unique Messiah: It Doesn’t Matter.

I came across an intelligent blog about the Jewish tablet that describes another supposed messiah prior to Christianity. What is interesting is that this messiah was resurrected after 3 days. But this isn’t anything new. This 3 day motif related to a savior is found withn pre-Christian Paganism. It’s an astrotheological motif about the solar cycle. Similar 3 day motifs can be found within Jewish scripture as well, but what is significant is that it is directly related to the messiah in this tablet. If orthodox Christianity was actually based on the evidence of historical documents, there would be a mass loss of faith at hearing such news.

Below is an excerpt from the blog and below that are some excerpts from the comments.

The Non-Unique Messiah: Does It Matter?

Frankly, if you’ve been paying attention or looked into history at all, this shouldn’t be that surprising. That a story about rebirth and resurrection should crop up while the Roman Republic was reinventing itself, and while its newly appointed Princeps Augustus was touting his reign as rebirth on a national scale, is no coincidence. During the first half of what we now call the first century C.E., rebirth was a common religious theme: mystery cults built around rebirth, like the cult of Isis and Osiris, were cropping up everywhere. New religions always mirror and appropriate temporal events to the divine (look at Mormonism). Christianity is no different, and it’s not immune from history. That the non-uniqueness of the Christian story should be so strikingly and starkly presented by this tablet may be shocking, but that human events beget religious beliefs is an anthropological Law.

What I wonder is whether that should be troubling. No doubt many believing Christians will feel threatened by the discovery that their religion has roots older than the name “Jesus,” and no doubt it proves that religion is always affected (and at least partially inspired) by humans. It may even suggest that it therefore might be fabricated. But if you really believe in the truth of the underlying story - i.e., if you’re truly spiritual and not just religious - that shouldn’t matter.

9 Gotchaye // Jul 8, 2008 at 10:03 pm

…it seems to me that a witness who maintains that someone performed a miracle is a whole lot more persuasive by himself than he would be if we’d already heard (and discounted the testimony of) other witnesses making similar claims about other people.

12 Gotchaye // Jul 10, 2008 at 6:08 pm

…as the number or likelihood of possible explanations for something increase, the likelihood of any other explanation being correct decreases. This tablet is at least suggestive of other explanations for our observation that modern Christianity (or something indistinguishable from it beforehand) exists, and so other explanations (including that Jesus actually rose) must be seen as less likely.

Criticism of the Apologetic use of Josephus

I’ve been interacting with some apologists lately. One of the issues that came up was Josephus and whether he refers to Jesus in the Testimonium Flavianum. I don’t care about the issue in and of itself. Even if Josephus refers to Jesus, this is still a reference after Jesus’ death. There is no reference to Jesus or any of the events in Jesus life while Jesus was alive. Besides, proving that some person mentioned a person named Jesus really doesn’t prove anything. ‘Jesus’ is just a name. The theological and supernatural beliefs of Christians can’t be justified by history, but for some reason Christians think it does.

History is not a science. Even the soft sciences have more claims for objectivity than New Testament scholarship. When someone says that scientists have come to a consensus, I tend to respect their authority. However, the concensus of New Testament scholars doesn’t really add up to much. Most New Testament scholars are Christians trained at Christian schools. According to their beliefs, they have strong motivation to prove orthodox opinion. And, as many of them teach at Christian schools, their jobs even might be risked if they voiced criticisms too openly.

Some of the scholars doubt Jesus historicity are scholars in fields such as ancient languages and history. These fields are directly relevant to New Testament studies, but apologists tend to dismiss these scholars because their opinions are inconvenient. As an example, when an apologist says that most Josephus scholars accept Josephus, it’s simply pleading to authority.

For anyone who wants to explore the criticisms for themselves, I’ll offer two articles about Josephus by Earl Doherty and two thread discussions where there are links to other info including an article by D.M. Murdock. After those links, I’ll offer a link to the discussion page on the Wikipedia article about “Josephus on Jesus” which gives a good overall view of the debate between believers and nonbelievers.

http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/supp10.htm

http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/supp16.htm

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=2441

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=953

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Josephus_on_Jesus

Origins of Christian Values

I've been writing a fair amount about the mythological parallels between Christianity and previous religions, but I haven't written much about how this relates to values. Christians could argue that the mythological similarities are just superficial details. It is true that details are just details and in some ways Christians did put those details together in a new way. Then again, so has every other religion. Despite literalist Christians insistence on worshipping a particular narrative, a story is still just a story. What actually matters is the values out of which the story formed.

There are several traditions that influenced Christian moral and theological beliefs. I went into great detail about Augustine who was influenced by Gnosticism, NeoPlatonism, and Stoicism among other traditions.

Many Gnostics had an ascetic attitude towards the material world and the body. The Christian mistrust of sexuality is based in this. Also, this is part of the Hellenistic atmosphere in general. Egyptian and Greek philosophy had elements of dualism. NeoPlatonism gave Christianity its love for higher truth and reality where God is absolute, but also NeoPlatonism offered the hope of an intuitive knowing, a faith that God would reveal himself. Stoicism in particular lent an ascetic bent to Christianity with its ethics of Natural Law (which is particularly important as modern Democracy is built upon it). Zoroastrianism created the extreme dualism of dark and light, good and evil; and this emphasized God as being in polar opposition to evil. This was conceived as a battle for souls where God was fated to win.

This metaphor of light and dark was part of the solar theology that had become popular prior to the common era. Egypt had a major hand in popularizing solar theology which portrayed God as being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. God according to solar theology was both far away and yet close like the sun and sunlight. God was present to his believers and responsive to their prayers. God was in the world as light shines in the dark and yet above the world unsullied by the material realm. Egyptian religion also made the distinction between God who created the sun and the sun itself as the solar disk. God was the spiritual light that could be experienced within.

Along with Judaism, all of these traditions had concepts of monotheism or monism. Egyptian religion is the earliest known example of monotheism.

Another element is savior theology which was very popular in all cultures at the time. These saviors were conqurerors of evil. They were teachers, healers and miracle workers. They offered themselves as examples to live by and they acted as guides, as mediators, as shephards. As godmen, they stood between earth and heaven. They were personally accessible to prayers and they acted as guardians. Saviors are resurrection deities that provide the pathway of rebirth for their followers. As tradition says of Jesus, some of these saviors even go down into the underworld before ascending.

Related to saviors, were their virgin mothers. Godmen tended to have strange conceptions and births. The concept of their mothers being virgins doesn't make sense rationally or scientifically, but it symbolizes deep archetypal truths. These virgin mothers are fertility deities (even when made into historical figures). As such, they are virgins because their fertility is eternal and infinite, their purity and goodness is inviolable. They are the source out of which all life emerges. The birth of the savior is the birth of us all. The savior is similar to the first man, and this is why Jesus is called the Second Adam. Death had been brought into the world at an earlier time, and the savior comes to defeat death. Without the Goddess, the God couldn't manifest in order to accomplish this. The Goddess gives form. The Virgin Mary gave Jesus his body, and when Jesus was placed into the womb of the cave his spiritual body was given form.

The name Mary has its most likely etymological origin in the Egyptian epithet of meri which means 'beloved'. This epithet could apply to any god or goddess, but Isis became increasingly popular. By Roman times, shrines and temples of her were found widely to the very borders of the Empire and beyond. The image of Isis nursing Horus is also the most likely prototype of the image of Mary nursing Jesus. To this day, some of the Black Madonnas worshipped in Europe were originally Isis statues. The importance of this meri epithet is that it represented an ideal of love. In earlier Egyptian culture, love was something given by a superior to a subordinate. This was the relationship of the worshipper to an Emperor or to a god. Sometime around the New Kingdom (16th to 11th century BCE), the understanding of love changed. Love became an ideal of equality. A god didn't just offer love but also received love. The believer could join their god in a relationship of love.

This seems related to the Axial Age (800 to 200 BCE). Some common traits of the Axial Age religious traditions: a quest for human meaning, idealization of an absolute and eternal reality beyond the mind and senses, development of a spiritual elite and travelling scholars, questioning gender roles in particular in terms of Patriarchy, and a challenging of authority. The latter is interesting because of the ideal within Christianity of martyrdom, but Christianity was a later emergence of Axial Age principles. Christianity inherited its martyrdom tradition from the Stoics who challenged authority in the hopes of being persecuted. Also, in challenging authority, Axial Age prophets challenged the rulling religious dogma which included the gods and the conceptions of the gods. This led to a popularization of monotheism and monism, but it also led to the first signs of atheist philosophy. Also, allegorical thinking was developed. Stories and personifications were symbols of a higher truth, but were deceiving and even idolatrous if taken literally.

As you can see, Christian moral ideals and understandings didn't arise within a vacuum. Just like every mythological motif, the cherished values of Christianity preceeded Christianity.

Response to “Atheism: Light or Heat?”

Another response to a blog.

http://kreitsauce.com/2009/03/22/atheism-light-or-heat/

I just want to give a quick response. Just because athiests disbelieve (or rather believe in a lack of a) God, it doesn’t follow they don’t have beliefs. God isn’t necessary for a moral belief system. Look into Natural Law which may or may not include a belief in God. Natural Law originated with the Greeks, and it was the Stoics who made into an ethical system that influenced Christianity.

I’m not an atheist myself because I see it as pointless to believe in a lack of a God. I’m agnostic with a strong spiritual bent. I sense that there is something more, but I feel no inclination to formulate it as a specific belief for or against anything in particular.

Atheism isn’t really a belief system as it’s merely a negation. Atheism includes a wide variety of moral beliefs. If you want to consider atheism and morality, you’d have to look at specific organizations and belief systems.

There are a some atheist religions and religions that are accepting of atheism. Buddhism and Taoism are two examples, but I’m sure there are others.

Also, you might be interested in researching Unitarian-Universalism. They accept atheists, agnostics, and religious believers. They’ve developed an ethical code that seeks what is acceptable to all of its members.

Response to an Apologist about The Jesus Mysteries

An apologist wrote a review about the book The Jesus Mysteries by Freke and Gandy. I normally try to avoid getting involved in discussions with apologists, but I felt like responding this time for some strange reason. As always, I don’t actually feel like arguing about any of it. I just wanted to show that scholarly opinion is not so clear. I suppose it’s unlikely an apologist would consent to any significant doubt, but hopefully he won’t delete my comment so that readers of his blog may see it and make up their own mind.

http://1peter315.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/jesus-mysteries/

I have this book, but it’s been a few years since I read it. Even though I enjoy their work, I think there are more scholarly writers out there.

“First of all, they too easily discount the evidence for the historical Jesus. They gloss over Josephus, Paul and the Gospels, even though if this was for any other historical figure it would be plenty of evidence.”

Many scholars doubt or dismiss the mention of Jesus Christ by Josephus. You can find those who do accept it, but there is no consensus of its authenticity. The Wikipedia article about Josephus on Jesus does a fairly good job of showing the complexity of debate.

As for Paul and the Gospels, there are many theories. It’s an endless debate also without concensus amongst scholars. However, if you’re looking for more scholarly support for Freke and Gandy, then I’d advise checking out Robert M. Price and Earl Doherty.

“Secondly they artificially blend a number of gods into a composite being that no ancient person would recognize. They claim that Jesus is a form of Osiris-Dionysus and by that they mean that they can take little bits from a dozen or so unrelated myths and see some similarity with the Gospels. “

Actually, Osiris-Dionysus was a name of the godman that was syncretized during the Hellenistic period prior to Christianity. Egyptian religion and Hellenism were very syncretistic, and this combining of attributes and names was very common. If you want more scholarly support for this, then check out Christ in Egypt by D.M. Murdock.

“Thirdly, they misrepresent the role of Gnosticism. I think they are right to see Gnosticism as playing a parellel role to the pagan mystery religions, socially if not theologically. However, they fall into the popular trap of saying that there were numerous Christianities right from the beginning, suggesting that Gnosticism might even have been earliest, with orthodox Christianity only later emerging.”

Yes, this is speculative because so little survived from the first century, but there is support for it. The earliest commentators on the New Testament were all Gnostics (Basilides being the earliest). In particular, some of the earliest commentators (Marcion and Valentinus) wrote the first commentaries on the earliest NT texts (Paul).

“The earliest Christian texts that we have (which are found in the New Testament) are in continuity with what became orthodox Christianity and in opposition to Gnosticism. To get where they want to be, they have to make some ridiculous claims such as Paul being a Gnostic and many of the New Testament books having a late date, well into the second century.”

There are other scholars that argue that Paul never writes about a historical figure and never gives physical details. Doherty, in particular, writes extensively about Paul.

There is a logical reason for arguing for a late dating for NT books. As I understand, the earliest copies come from the second century. It’s traditional to date them earlier, but there is no hard evidence from the first century.

“They are totally out of touch even with critical scholarship and their claims are far from the evidence.”

They’re not out of touch, but they present just one perspective. Scholars show a great variety in their conclusions.

Technology: Information, Imagination, and more

Technology, of course, is having a massive influence on society. But it isn’t technology itself but what it makes possible. Two aspects to this are information and imagination. Human potential is increased and so are moral issues.

Individuals and groups have more information technology which offers more power. The results of this are too numerous to list. A simple example is how cellphones have given oppressed people a quick and easy way to organize. A protest can form and disappear before the police even realize what is going on. On the other hand, technology offers better ways for the government to control its citizens and propaganda is becoming more advanced.
On the level of imagination, it’s even more interesting to consider the consequences. Television and movies have opened wide the gates of our collective imagination. And other things (such as cameras, software, and websites like YouTube) have given an opportunity for average people to create and explore possibilites.

The problem is that the more people know and imagine the more they become dissatisfied and restless. And our normal lives pale against the fantasies we obsess over, whether porn or pop stars or travelling. And this is the moral issue. In the past people repressed their imaginations. Thinking about unnatural sexual acts? Just repress it and say 100 Hail Marys. That often works, but often doesn’t. Even priests end up acting on some of those urges. And repression works even less in a culture like ours where everything you can imagine satiates the media.
Right now, many governments are trying to figure this all out. Violence and sex are legislated, but imagination is more difficult to legislate. It only becomes an issue when someone’s imagination becomes a product, something to be shared. There has been many cases in the past decade about animated porn and violence. In the US, violent video games have been mostly winning this battle as some big cases have been thrown out of the court.

Anime porn is an even thornier issue. Art has often been held above the level of pop culture, but the distinction grows less with advancement of technology. Is a picture of an underage nude person porn? Does it matter the intentions of the photographer? Is there such a thing as tasteful nudity? Is the human body to be considered a respectable subject of art? Is it simply a matter of age? If so, what about a painting of a nude underage person? Or what about anime? How legal officials determine the legality of photographic or video porn is by determining the person’s age, but how does one determine the age of an animated figure? An anime character isn’t real and so how does age of consent apply? And who is the victim? Is society as a whole a victim?

It’s well-known that a certain sector of Japanese culture is obsessed with images of young girls. And this has gone beyond anime. There has been computer programs created that portray a cute underage girl you can play with and give gifts to. There have been robots created to look young. Would sex with an android that looked like a child still be pedophilia? These are real questions society will be struggling with very soon.

I have some interest in virtual worlds, but I’ve only been on a couple of them such as Second Life. I’ve heard of another one called Red Light Center. It’s designed so that people can use avatars to have sex with other people’s avatars. I don’t know but something seems missing in the equation. Having virtual sex with a stranger’s virtual self doesn’t overly appeal to me. But the concept of it is fascinating.

This type of thing is just the beginning. Such technological imaginations are also used towards practical ends. Architects, chemists, and doctors all use these technologies to portray information visually. Also, if you consider what science has learned, it’s going to be a brave new world. Science has researched about how the brain works and various techniques to read minds and alter functioning. Scientists now understand how brainwashing works and much money has been put into light and sound machines that can have powerful effects on the brain.

On a really dark note, the development of robots and AI have been put to military use. The US has thousands of unmanned robots operating overseas. I read about a problem when something went wrong with one robot and it started targeting US soldiers. Wars of the future will be technological. Warfare is already happening on the internet. I forget which country, but one of Russia’s neighbors had its whole internet system knocked out. Fortunately, they were prepared for such an attack, but many countries such as the US supposedly aren’t prepared.

PKD Trumps Harpur and Ligotti

Sometimes I wonder why I write a blog. When I write in my journal, I never wonder about this... I suppose because there is no potential audience to make me self-conscious. But a blog is a public spectacle... and so I wonder what purpose it serves. I sometimes hope someone reads it and at least finds it interesting, and at other times I'd rather be left alone with my rambling thoughts.

I'm wondering about this specifically in relation to my recent blogs about Christianity. I partly write just to give my thoughts form and to make notes about the subjects I study. However, I'm also trying to communicate... afterall, that is what writing is about. I'm sure like everyone my motives are mixed. There are various aspects to my personality, various hopes and fears. Plus, blogging is simply a good distraction from other more responsible activities such as washing my dishes.

In writing about Christianity, part of me wants to persuade. I believe in truth and I want others to believe in truth. I have this lingering faith that truth can somehow win out against all the BS in the world. Along with this, I'd like to believe that religion can be something more than history too often demonstrates it to be. Tom Harpur writes about the horrific side of Christian history, but he also writes about hope... about the possibility that spiritual truth (whatever it may be) can rise above the politics and superficialities that mainstream Christianity has consisted of for centuries. I was raised a New Age Christian and so this message resonates with a part of me that is still innocent and earnest in my sense of faith. Who knows, maybe society can change. Maybe religion can become something more than a means of social control. Tom Harpur believes that if Christianity was willing to face up to its own dark past that a bright future is possible. What a happy thought that is.

But then my inner Thomas Ligotti speaks up. Going by Zappfe, Ligotti the pessimist dismisses such New Agey hopes as just another attempt to avoid suffering. Life is suffering and everything we do is an attempt to avoid the awareness of suffering. Sadly or fortunately, we're simply incapable of even comprehending the horror of our existence. It doesn't matter what cruelties any particular religion was built upon because our whole society is built upon misery. We're just f*cked! Then again, if I have to waste my life in some manner or another, maybe that is all the more reason to sit around contemplating spiritual truths... even if they are nothing more than pretty lies.

I do on occasion think of myself as a Christian, in spite my constant criticisms. My friend tells me I'm a Christian... and, heck, why not? I'm a Christian and many other things besides. It's all good. To be serious, I actually do feel drawn to Christianity, specifically certain Gnostic ideas. Plus, I'm just fascinated by these great myths that percolated down through the millennia to finally take form in the figure of Jesus and the rest of the cast. When I contemplate these stories and symbols, I do sense a deeper truth, something that feels real.

In the end, neither Harpur nor Ligotti wins out. Their voices fade away, and I see Philip K. Dick sitting with one of his cats and he is bantering about something or another. It is true that he was crazy, but crazy in an entertaining and mostly harmless way. He had a playful imagination and an overactive one at that. Harpur and Ligotti, on the other hand, seem like such serious fellows. I can often be quite serious myself. Still, I'd rather be a fool like PKD. He took various random ideas (including ancient mythology and Gnosticism) and he made it his own. He wasn't a good person, he wasn't a bad person. He was just a guy who liked to tell stories and who had an insatiable curiosity. Who needs hope or pessimism if they have curiosity?

Too many people in the world have answers. Even though I have many opinions, I know I don't have any answer myself. But part of me wants an answer. And that is fine to an extent. Maybe we can't live without some answer or another to hold onto. Even so, I don't want to ever stop questioning. If life ever becomes so depressing or boring to me that I lose my sense of curiosity, then what would be the point?

So, I can get annoyed at fundies who present apologetic self-deception as truth. That is their answer and it seems a fairly stupid answer to me. Then again, I get annoyed at lots of things in life. I pretty much get annoyed at anyone who claims any final conclusion about anything. And I get annoyed at life for its lack of a conclusion, its lack of a clear point to it all. I must admit I get too easily annoyed. It must be nice being a fundie, or a fanatic of any variety for that matter, who possesses unquestioning certainty. There is no doubt that fundies get annoyed as well, but at least they have conviction in their annoyance. As for me, I just end up turning my annoyance back on myself. I get annoyed even at my own attempts at finding answers.

Its just with every answer comes a role to play. The fundie is playing their role of righteous believer and some of them can really embrace that role, but there are many other roles besides. I get tired of roles. I go to work and play various roles... for my supervisor, for my fellow employees, for the customers. And then there are all the family roles I'm stuck in... son, brother, brother-in-law, uncle, etc. It almost makes me feel envious of the people playing the role of homeless... a much simpler role to play in many ways even with its drawbacks. There is this one homeless schizophrenic guy that I often suspect has life figured out. That is almost the perfect role because then everyone leaves you alone.

It makes me wonder what conclusion I've come to in my own life order to play the roles I play. I guess any story has to have its roles to be played. Maybe I just don't like the story I'm in. When I'm blogging, I'm usually playing the role of the intellectual. It's a role I'm good at to an extent, but intellectuality can bring out the cynic in me. I suppose I could play the role of the person who has no opinion at all... except I'm too opinionated to attempt that role. I've tried many roles in my life. I've even tried to play the optimist a number of times, and I really suck at it. I'm almost attracted to the role of the Christian miserable sinner except that role doesn't seem like very much fun, and the dogma of the role of the righteous Christian would give me brain cramps.

I somewhat admire Ligotti in his adamant pessimism which almost feels like a stoic fatalism. His view seems so simple and straightforward. Ultimately, I don't understand such a view. I'm a spiritual person. One of the best roles I've found for myself is the spiritual seeker who never finds. It isn't always a perfectly satisfying part to play, but it keeps me occupied. As an endlessly questioning seeker, I feel some connection to Philip K. Dick. He definitely had restless mind syndrome.

Another aspect to PKD was that he had great interest in social roles. One of my favorite stories by him is his novel A Scanner Darkly. That story has a strong Gnostic theme. It's a bit dark in it's portrayal of society and relationships, but I oddly find it gives me a sense of hope or else something related to hope. The main character Arctor never gives up. He is confused and split, but he continually questions and in some ways sees more clearly than the other characters. Partly, he tries to step outside of the roles he finds himself in... even though he ends up stepping into other roles. No perspective gives him absolute clarity, but more significant is his nagging sense of doubt. In Arctor, I see something akin to my own seeking nature, my own seeking without knowing what I'm seeking. The seeker is just another role I suppose, but at least it isn't a mindless role. There is a sense in this that there is something more than the masks we wear. In Arctor's shifting perspectives, he at times nearly forgets all roles and a deeper aspect seems to emerge.

Arctor is very much a Christ-like figure. There is the dual nature, the sacrifice and suffering, the descent, the emergence of something new. The dual nature aspect is particularly compelling. Saviors tend to be dual natured in several ways. There is the well-known duality of God and man combined. However, saviors are unifiers of duality in general. Many savior figures combine human and animal features for instance. Another duality is that between good and evil personified as Jesus and Satan or Horus and Set. The relationship of the latter two is a really good example because they were even at times represented as a singular dual-natured god, Horus-Set.

What is interesting about Arctor is that he has a split personality such that one half of him is both spying on and looking out for his other half. Meanwhile, sweet little Donna is playing the role of Judas, but in a sense Arctor willingly plays into this betrayal by his past choices. Arctor is both outside and within the oppressive system, pretending to be a narc. Still, he holds something back from the drama of it all. Donna may think she knows the game, but she doesn't really know Arctor. Despite her larger perspective, she is more identified with the role she is playing than Arctor is. Most of the characters seem to be stuck in roles. Even though outwardly the story is about drug addiction, the story is really about social roles and social control, about how people get stuck in patterns of mind.

And beyond all of that, there is another message. Those who think they're in the know may not know as much as they think. Instead, at the bottom of loss of all certainty, one might discover something unexpected. It isn't nihilism for there is a different kind of certainty within the faith that allows one to survive the descent. There is some kind of balance in it however precarious it may be.

In real life, however, many people don't survive the descent. Staying within the confines of conviction is much safer. Although, how I see it is that such descents are part of a story, and I suspect we ultimately don't choose the stories we are in. I happen to be sympathetic to the story of Arctor, but I'm biased. Maybe ideally I should try to feel compassion for everyone in their respective stories. And maybe I should do many things. Compassion for fundies? I'll have to work on that.

Egyptian Symbols within Christianity

Besides the obvious crosses and crucifixes in many religions across the world that predated Christianity, there are also other non-Christian symbols found within Christianity. As I’ve been focusing on Egypt lately, I’ll give two examples from that culture. But realize there are many other such symbolic similarities that can also be shown. I also chose the following quote because the author demonstrates that early Christians (including Augustine) were aware of these symbols and their meaning.

The Pagan Christ, Tom Harpur

pp 88-89: The Egyptian Christ, manifested in the sign of Pisces, was fore-ordained to be Ichthys (Greek word for “fish”), the fisherman and to be accompanied by fishermen followers. Doctrinally, he was the “fisher of men”. Horus, the best-known Egyptian Christ figure was associated from time immemorial with the fish, and Massey’s Natural Genesis features a reproduction of an Egyptian engraving showing Horus holding a fish above his head. Several of the early Christian Fathers refer to Christ also as Ichthys, or “that great fish,” and the mitre worn by succeeding popes “in the the shoes of the fishermen” is shaped exactly like a fish’s mouth. It’s well known that the Greek word ichthys forms an acrostic meaning “Jesus Christ the Son of God (Our) Savior.” Having been in Rome numerous times during my dozen years covering religion around the world for the Toronto Star, I have seen first-hand how frequently the outline of a fish occurs in catacombs as a Christian symbol. It also doubled as a sign of the Eucharist. Prosper Africanus, an early Christian theologian, calls Christ “that great fish who fed from himself the disciples on the shore and offered himself as a fish to the world.” Commenting on this same passage from the end of John’s Gospel, St. Augustine says that the broiled fish in the story “is Christ.” The art found in ancient Egyptian tombs commonly shows fish, fishermen, nets, and fishtraps of varying kinds. All have the same spiritual meaning.

Much more important, however, is the fact that the Egyptian texts bear witness to an “only begotten god” (meaning begotten of one parent only), whose symbol was the beetle because in ancient science this creature was thought to be “self-produced, being unconceived by a female.” Massey says, “The only begotten god is a well-known type [symbol], then, of divinity worshipped in Egypt. In each cult, the Messiah-son and manifestor was the only-begotten god. This, according to the Egyptian text, is the Christ, the Word, the manifestor in John’s Gospel.” In fact, in one early version of the Greek text of the New Testament’s Gospel of John, the phrase “the only begotten son of God” actually reads “the only begotten god”! Its very unorthodoxy makes it likely that it is the preferred, original reading.

The truth thus came forcefully home to me that this Egyptian Christ is indeed the express image of the Christ of John’s Gospel, who begins in the first chapter without father or mother and is the Word of the beginning, the opener and the architect, the light of the world, the self-originated and only-begotten God. I found that the very phraseology of Jonh often echoed the Egyptian texts, which tell of he who was “the Beginning of the becoming, from the first, who made all things but was not made.” Some of the Fathers of the Church knew that the beetle was a symbol of Christ. Augustine, indeed, writes, “My own good beetle, not so much because he is only begotten (God), not because he, the author of himself, has taken on the form of mortals, but because he has rolled himself in our filth and chooses to be born from this filth itself” - like the dung beetle.

When the god Osiris came to the earth as a savior, he came as his own son, the child Horus. He was born “like or as a Word.” The Egyptian text says that he came to earth as a substitute. Indeed, an ancient Egyptian festival celebrating the birth of Horus was called “The Day of the Child in His Cradle.”

When Horus comes to earth in the Egyptian story, he is supported or given bread by Seb, who is god of the earth, “the father on earth.” He is thus the divine father on earth of the messiah-son, who manifests in time. Just as Joseph, the adoptive father of Jesus, provides shelter and food for his son, so Seb (Jo-seph) cares for Horus. The consort of Seb is the mother of heaven, named Nu; Meri (Mary) is another name for the mother of the messiah. Massey concludes, “Thus Seb and Meri for earth and heaven would afford the two mythic originals for Joseph and Mary as parents of the divine child.” There are seven different Marys in the four Gospels. They correspond with uncanny fidelity to seven Marys, or Hathors in the Egyptian stories.

Egyptian Christianity: Origins and Destruction

Osiris-Dionysus- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term Osiris-Dionysus is used by some historians of religion[1] to refer to a group of deities worshipped around the Mediterranean in the centuries prior to the emergence of Jesus. It has been argued that these deities were closely related and shared many characteristics, most notably being male, partly-human, born of virgins, life-death-rebirth deities and other similar characteristics.

The Egyptian god Osiris and the Greek god Dionysus had been equated as long ago as the 5th century BC by the historian Herodotus (see interpretatio graeca). By Late Antiquity, some Gnostic and Neoplatonist thinkers had expanded this syncretic equation to include Aion, Adonis, Attis, Mithras and other gods of the mystery religions. The composite term Osiris-Dionysus is found around the start of the first century BC, for example in Aegyptiaca by Hecateus of Abdera, and in works by Leon of Pella.

The JesusMysteries - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Freke and Gandy base the Jesus Mysteries thesis partly on a series of parallels between their suggested biography of Osiris-Dionysus and the biography of Jesus drawn from the four canonical gospels. Their suggested reconstruction of the myth of Osiris-Dionysus, compiled from the myths of ancient dying and resurrected “godmen,” bears a striking resemblance to the gospel accounts. The authors give a short list of parallels at the beginning of the book:

Osiris-Dionysus is God made flesh, the savior and “Son of God.”
His father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin, 7 month pregnancy.
He is born in a cave or humble cowshed on December 25 before three shepherds.
He offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism.
He miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony.
He rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while people wave palm leaves to honor him.
He dies at Eastertime as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
After his death he descends to hell, then on the third day he rises from the dead and ascends to heaven in glory.
His followers await his return as the judge during the Last Days.
His death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine, which symbolize his body and blood.[1]

Later chapters add further parallels, including Mary’s 7 month pregnancy.

Serapis- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Serapis (Latin spelling, or Sarapis in Greek) was a syncretic Hellenistic-Egyptian god in Antiquity. His most renowned temple was at Alexandria,[1]. Under Ptolemy Soter, efforts were made to integrate Egyptian religion with that of their Hellenic rulers. Ptolemy’s policy was to find a deity that should win the reverence alike of both groups, despite the curses of the Egyptian priests against the gods of the previous foreign rulers (i.e Set who was lauded by the Hyksos). Alexander the Great had attempted to use Amun for this purpose, but he was more prominent in Upper Egypt, and not as popular with those in Lower Egypt, where the Greeks had stronger influence. The Greeks had little respect for animal-headed figures, and so a Greek-style anthromorphic statue was chosen as the idol, and proclaimed as the equivalent of the highly popular Apis.[2]It was named Aser-hapi (i.e. Osiris-Apis), which became Serapis, and was said to be Osiris in full, rather than just his Ka (life force).

Water into Wine, Tom Harpur

p 242: When it comes to the widespread first-century cult of Serapis, Barb explains: “Serapis is fundamentally Osiris/Horus… and he serves as the expression of monotheistic tendencies: [there is] one god, Serapis,” it says on numerous monuments.

Christ in Egypt, D.M. Murdock

pp 31-32: As in Christianity, within the Egyptian solar religion the sun god’s power is illustrated by the divine qualities of omnipresence, omnipotence and oniscience, typically defining the god of the cosmos within monotheism. For example, demonstrating his omnipresence, the God Sun is contained in everything, as in the Great Hymn,” which addresses the sun as “you create millions of incarnations from yourself, the One.”6 In a section about the god “Re-Horakhty,” Dr. Assman entitles a selection of hymns, “oOmnipresence of the Light: God-Filled World.’ This material reflecting omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience includes scriptures such as: “Every way is full of your light”; “Are you not the leader on all ways?”; and “There are no limits to the field of his vision and no place hidden to his ka.”1 The ka is defined by James Allen as the “force of conscious omniscience in its worshippers - called in the texts the “sun-folks”3 - as highlighted in this line from a sun hymn: “The morning sun which enables one to know all things.”4

This concept of the “omniscience of light” is part of the “new solar theology” in which “the unattainably distant sun comes palpably near to earth creatures,” providing ” the idea of the simultaneous remoteness and proximity of god…”5 The German scholar next says:
The idea of proximity of god arises not from the sensual experience of light, but from the transcendental idea of a divine omniscience and omnipresence, in which god is right next to the heart “that turns to him.”6

As we can see, the Egyptian concept of God here is highly reminiscent of that found in Judeo-Christianity. The Egyptian God Sun is also depicted as hearing “the prayers of all who call him.”7

pp 53-54: Regarding the Egyptian and Christian trinities and scriptural parallels, Morenz is prompted to conclude, “The multifarious links between Egypt and Judeo-Christian scriptures and trinitariantheology can already be traced with some degree of plausibility.”5 In his discussion of “Egyptian trinities,” as he terms them, Morenz includes a section addressing the idea of “unity in plurality.”6 The German scholar also points out that a “trinity” can likewise be created out of the “primordial One” and “the first pair of gods to be begotten”7 Regarding the motif of the trinity, Morenz further states:

…thus three gods are combined and treated as a single being, adressed in the singular. In this way the spiritual force of Egyptian religion shows a direct link with Christian theology.

Deconstructing Jesus, Robert M. Price

p 26: Egypt presents us with the same picture yet again. The first attested workers for Christ there were the Gnostics Valentinus, Basilides, Apelles, Carpocrates, and his son Isidore. Phlegon preserves a letter attributed to Hadrian noting that all Christian priests in Egypt worshipped Serapis, too! The leading gospels in Egypt, the Gospels according to the Hebrews and according to the Egyptians, as far as we can tell from their extant fragments, were Gnostic or heretical in color. Bauer could detect no trace of Demetrius. But does not tradition make the gospel-writer Mark the first bishop of Egypt? Indeed it does, but like the letters of Jesus and Abgarus, this legend seems to be but another spurious “orthodox” origin for Egyptian Christianity (assuming Mark and his gospel could themselves be judged orthodox!).

pp 26-27: About the Nag Hammadi library - “What makes this discovery all the more astonishing is that associated documents show the collection of leather-bound volumes to have been from the monastic library of the Brotherhood of Saint Pachomius, the first known Christian monastery. Apparently when the monks received the Easter Letter from Athanasius in 367 C.E., which contains the first known listing of the canonical twenty-seven New Testament books, warning the faithful to read no others, the brethren must have decided to hide their cherished “heretical gospels, lest they fall into the hands of the ecclesiastical book burners. We may perhaps take that monastery as a cameo, a microcosm of Egyptian Christianity in the fourthcentury, diverse in doctrine, though soon to suffocate beneath the smothering veil of catholic orthodoxy.

Christ in Egypt, D.M. Murdock

pp 23-24: [Dr. Richard A. Gabriel in Jesus the Egyptian] tersely recounts this disturbing history:

In 356 C.E. ConstantiusII ordered the Egyptian temples of Isis-Osiris closed and forbade the use of Egyptian hieroglyphics as a religious language. In 380 C.E. Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity to be the official Roman state religion and all pagan cults were thereafter forbidden. These edicts were devastating to the Egyptian culture and religion, both of which had been preserved over millennia through the Egyptian language and the writing systems of Egyptian priests. In 391 C.E., the patriarch of Alexandria, Theophilus, summoned the monks to arms and turned them against the city of Memphis and the great shrine of Serapis, the Serapeum, the main temple of the Osiran-Isis religion. The attack was akin to ordering the destruction of the Vatican. Egyptian priests were massacred in their shrines and in the streets. The ferocity of the violence consumed priests, followers, and the Egyptian intellectual elite of Alexandria, Memphis and the other cities of Egypt who were murdered and their temples and libraries destroyed. The institutional structure of Egyptian religion, then more than four millennium old, was demolished in less than two decades.”

The Love of Truth vs. the Sophistry of Apologetics

A major reason I blog now is because apologists annoy me. I used to post on discussion boards, but the discussions tend to get dragged down to the lowest common denominator.

Apologists are annoying in that they can often be anti-intellectual, but not always. Sometimes they’re quite intellectually capable even when their focus is very narrow. It can even take a while to realize you’re dealing with an apologist because many believers prefer to not express their beliefs openly. That is even more annoying because I can sense that the person is filtering everything they think, but it takes effort to realize they’re not actually open to new viewpoints. The most intelligent apologists have a knack for creating convoluted arguments and false herrrings.

What is even worse is when they demand you defend your argument when they can’t defend their own. I’ve spent years studying religion, and it’s a complex field. Why would I want to deal with people who’ve only read very narrowly? Why would want to try to spoonfeed information to those who have no respect for knowledge? And apologists can be persistent, going around and around with the same tired ploys.

Beyond all of that, what really annoys me is that apologists are very talented at perverting the truth. To me, truth is my faith. When someone uses rational logic falsely or deceptively, then it pisses me off. I just don’t understand how someone can act rationally while at the same time having little respect for rationality.

I’m not criticizing faith. I’m all for faith, but faith and rationality are not the same thing. Rationality limited by unquestioned beliefs is not rational at all. Certainly, it’s acceptable for one’s faith to inform one’s rationality, but one is no longer in the realm of rationality when one’s rationality is limited to one’s faith. As such, rationality should also inform one’s faith. No belief should be held back from the gaze of curiosity, questioning, doubt and general intellectual inquiry. Also, I’d even go so far to say that faith without doubt is no faith at all.
Apologetics has been a major component of our society for centuries that so much of our culture has been limited to the context of Christian assumptions. It’s so subtle that we usually don’t even notice it.

A simple example is a reference work such as a dictionary. I have a Sharp electronic dictionary that uses the New Oxford American Dictionary. It doesn’t have entries for Basilides, Valentinius, or Marcion. These three were the earliest Christians to write commentaries on New Testament scriptures. All of them had all or most of their works destroyed by later Christians, and the latter two were labelled heretics some decades after they left the Catholic Church. On the other hand, there are entries for all of the later apologists and heresiologists. Irenaeus has an entry and he was the very one who called Marcion and Valentinius heretics.

So, why is a mainstream scholarly dictionary limiting the information shown to the public according to the decrees of Catholic orthodoxy? How did the Catholic Church gain such influence over secular scholarship? Why would a scholar choose to follow Church orthodoxy? Was there a Christian majority in the committee that decided what made it into the dictionary?

This is the same with all other references. When you do an internet search about Christianity, some of the best sources of info get buried beneath the numerous apologetic sites. When you go to Wikipedia, many of the articles have very clear religious biases.

Here are some discussions with and articles about apologists:

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/art_paradigm_shift.htm

http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/ctvadvert.htm

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=2255

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=2349

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=2366

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=2434

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=2063

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=1502

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=1158

Christ in Egypt, by D.M. Murdock

Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
By D.M. Murdock (AKA Acharya S)


I've only so far read parts of Christ in Egypt. It's large and I'll mostly use it as a reference. This book follows the same theme as her earlier books, but it's different in that the author is focusing on just one mythological parallel to Christianity. Egyptian religion is very fascinating and Murdock provides tons of information. I've never studied Egyptian religion too deeply, but this makes me even more curious.

If you're not familiar with the authors work, she mostly writes about comparative mythology in terms of Christianity. In particular, she emphasizes astrotheology which is a field that is growing in popularity within a certain sector of scholars. If you'd like to learn more before deciding whether you want to buy this book, I'd recommend checking out her website or blog (Truth Be Known). She has some good introductory articles that explain what astrotheology is.
You might be familiar with astrotheology from the first part of the movie Zeitgeist. If you'd like to explore similar authors, then check out Robert M. Price, Earl Doherty, Tom Harpur and Freke and Gandy. All of those authors have written about the Egyptian religion. There are many others as well. One nice thing about Murdock's books is that the bibliographies give you many directions in which to study further.

Anyways, I highly recommend this book. But it probably wouldn't be a good introduction for most people. She is meticulous in her scholarship which means that you have to be seriously interested in the subject to want to read a book like this. The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light by Tom Harpur would be a better first book to read. He covers similar territory, but in a more concise way.

I personally like the author's large books filled with tons of information. And, with a subject that attracts many critics, the more details and examples provided the better the argument is supported.

Even though there are many books out there that discuss Christianity and Egyptian religion, Murdock's Christ in Egypt is unique. She realized how much info was out there, and no one had yet collected it all in one place before. Her enormous goal was to find every scholarly reference to the Egyptian correlations to Christianity. In doing this, she researched materials that had never been published before and materials that had never appeared in English before. At this time, there is no better resource available.

If you want to see more info about this subject, the author has a forum about it at her discussion board: Truth Be Known Nation: Christ in Egypt. And here is the Table of Contents from the Stellar House Publishing website.

Jesus Christ the Sun

“Christ, Constantine, Sol Invictus: the Unconquerable Sun” by Ralph Monday:

Ironically, Constantine being a pragmatic Roman, interpreted Christ as a war god, not the “prince of peace,” and he apparently never truly understood the mysteries of Christianity, retaining his right to worship the pagan gods, especially the sun. He never took baptism until shortly before his death.

Charles Freeman questions whether or not Constantine’s famous adoption of Christianity was a spiritual conversion or simply a matter of political expediency, because the suggesting evidence is that Constantine viewed the God of Christianity as being very similar to the old pagan gods, like Apollo, and this latter god was one that Constantine paid particular homage to. Indeed, the triumphal arch of Constantine, built in 315 by the senate of Rome after his “conversion,” contains reliefs of Jupiter, Mars and Hercules, and Constantine apparently associated his victory at the Milvian Bridge with the power of the sun, but no Christian symbol can be found on the structure and there is no reference to Christ; however, there are images and homage paid to Mithras, another sun god whose birthday is December 25th (Emperor’s State of Grace).

Another example of the influence of this official sun worship on Christianity is:

Constantine’s law of…321 [C.E] uniting Christians and pagans in the observance
of the “venerable day of the sun” It is to be noted that this official solar
worship, the final form of paganism in the empire…, was not the traditional
Roman-Greek religion of Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, and the other Olympian deities.
It was a product of the mingling Hellenistic-Oriental elements, exemplified in
Aurelian’s establishment of Eastern Sun worship at Rome as the official religion
of the empire, and in his new temple enshrining Syrian statutes statues of Bel
and the sun…. Thus at last Bel, the god of Babylon, came into the official
imperial temple of Rome, the center of the imperial religion. It was this late
Roman-Oriental worship of one supreme god, symbolized by the sun and absorbing
lesser divinities as subordinates or manifestations of the universal deity, that
competed with young Christianity. This was the Roman religion that went down in
defeat but infiltrated and colored the victorious church with its own elements,
some of which can be seen to this day. (Cramer 4)

All the evidence suggests that Constantine viewed Christ as one of many gods in a crowded pantheon, a war god at that, who had provided him with his victory over Maxentius, and that this new Christian god could be used as a political tool to solidify his power and prestige in the empire, as well as bringing about a total homogeneity of culture to ancient Rome as witnessed by his calling of the council of Nicea in 325 C.E. to settle the Arian controversy, and also by the later solidification of the dates of Easter and Christmas, for he well knew that power and control in a complex organization depended upon common agreement in regard to the symbols that held it together. For example, in May 330 at the dedication of the new Roman capital Constantinople Constantine was “[d]ressed in magnificent robes and wearing a diadem encrusted with jewels (another spiritual allegiance of Constantine’s, to the sun, a symbol of Apollo, first known from 310 was expressed through rays coming from the diadem”) (Freeman). The ancient connection to the sun as a god clearly exemplifies Constantine’s adoration and admiration for such a “heavenly” deity.

The Pagan Christ, by Tom Harpur, p 83:

Few Christians today realize that in the fifth century, Pope Leo the Great had to tell Church members to stop worshipping the sun. The first ostensibly Christian emperor, Constantine, who converted to the new faith at the beginning of the fourth century, was still worshipping the sun god Helios many years later, as coins and other evidence reveal

Christ in Egypt, D.M. Murdock, pp 112-113:

Concerning this solar celebration and the obvious correlation to Jesus Christ, Kellner states:

…The comparison of Christ with the sun, and His work with the victory of light
over darkness, frequently appears in the writings of the Fathers. St.
Cyprian spoke of Christ as the true sun(sol verus). St. Ambrose says
precisely, ” He is our new sun (Hic sol novus noster).” Similar figures
are employed by Gregory of Nazianzus, Zeon of Verona, Leo the Great, Gregory
the Great, etc.1

As we have seen from Luke 1:24-27 and John 3:30, it would appear that the “holy Scriptures” in fact may have suggested this idea!

In reality, so common was the contention of Christians worshipping the sun that Church fathers such as Tertullian (c. 155-230 AD/CE) and Augustine (354-430 AD/CE) were compelled to compose refutations of the claim. In Ad Nationes (1.13), Tertullian writes:

The Charge of Worshipping the Sun Met by a Retort.

…Others, with greater regard to good manners, it must be confessed,
suppose that the sun is the god of the Christians, because it is a well-known
fact that we pray towards the east, or because we make Sunday a day of
festivity. What then? Do you do less than this? Do not many among you with
an affectation of sometimes worshipping the heavenly bodies likewise, move your
lips in the direction of the sunrise?

Once more, in his Apology (6), Tertullian addresses what appears to be a widespread insight that he surprisingly asserts comes from those with “more information” and “greater verisimilitude,” or truth:

…Others, again, certainly with more information and greater verisimilitude,
believe that the sun is our god. We shall be counted Persians perhaps,
though we do not worship the orb of day painted on a piece of linen cloth,
having himself everywhere in his own disk. The idea no doubt has
originated from our being known to turn to the east in prayer. But you,
many of you, also under pretence sometimes of worshipping the heavenly bodies,
move our lips in the direction of the sunrise.

In addition to turning to the east for prayer, early Christians oriented their churches to the sun, a practice that continued into more modern times in some places…

Who Was Jesus?, D.M. Murdock, pp 244-45:

Hence, an early Christian apologist not only felt compelled to address what appears to be a frequent contention that the Christians were sun-worshippers and that Christ was the sun, but he also seems to be asserting that such a contention is more accurate than other observations about his religion!

These contentions of sun worship persisted for centuries and remained prevalent enough by the time of St. Augustine (354- 430 AD/CE) that he too was forced to protest then min his Tractates on the Gospel of John (XXXIV):

I Think that the Lord says, “I am the light of the world,” is clear to those
that have eyes, by which they are made partakers of this light: but they who
have not eyes except in the flesh alone wonder at what is said by the Lord Jesus
Christ, “I am the light of the world.” And perhaps there may not be
wanting some one too who says with himself: Whether perhaps the Lord Christ is
that sun which by its rising and setting causes the day? For there have
not been wanting heretics who thought this. The manichaeans have supposed
that the Lord Christ is that sun which is visible to carnal eyes, exposed and
public to be seen, not only by men, but by the beasts. But the right faith
of the Catholic Church rejects such a fiction, and perceives it to be a devilish
doctrine; not only by believing acknowledges it to be such, but in the case of
who it can, proves it even by reasoning. Let us therefore reject this kind
of error, which the Holy Church has anathematized from the beginning. Let
us not suppose that the Lord Jesus Christ is this sun which we see rising from
the east, setting in the west, to whose course succeeds night, whose rays are
obscured by a cloud, which removes from place to place by a set motion: the Lord
Christ is not such a thing as this. The Lord Christ is not the sun that
was made, but He by whom the sun was made. For all things were made by
Him, and without him was nothing made.

Thus, we have clear evidence that for centuries Christianity was perceived as sun worship and Christ as sun. This fact represents a major clue as to who Jesus was, demonstrating the environment into which the gospel tale was introduced and the prevailing religious concepts against which his priesthood was competing.

Christ in Egypt, D.M. Murdock, p 115:

Although Augustine doth evidently protest too much in attempting to delineate Christ from the physical sun, the fact remains that this distinction is precisely the same as was said of Amen, Re, Osiris and other sun gods or epithets of the sun and/or creators of the solar disc, which was distinguished by the epithet “Aten.”

p114:

Interestingly, in the Coffin Texts (CT Sp. 196, 207) appear references to the “festival of the seventh day,”3 instantly reminding one of the Jewish sabbath and the Christian Sunday. Not only is the Sun’s day also the Lord’s day, but from early times Christ himself was depicted with his face “shining as the sun” (Mt 17:2), as “the light of the world” (Jn 8:12) and “a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun” (Acts 26:13). Lord Jesus was also called by a number of solar epithets, such as “Sun of Righteousness” (Mal 4:2), “the true sun,” “our sun” and the “sun of Resurrection.”4 This latter epithet, which sounds very Egyptian, especially as concerns Osiris, was given to Christ by Clement of Alexandria, for one. 5 Furthermore, in the late second century Theophilus of Antioch (”Autolychus,” 2.15) specifically stated that the sun is a “type of God,” thereby imbuing it with divine qualities and essentially identifying it with Christ, who is likewise a “type of God.”

The World of Augustine

I was just thinking I should do a post about the context of Augustine’s life. It was an interesting moment in history.

Constantine died less than two decades before Augustine was born. The first Council of Nicea had profound impact, but the Empire was still largely Pagan. Constantine himself mixed Christianity and Paganism. Constantine probably didn’t even really distinguish between the different varieties of sun worship. He probably understood Jesus in the terms of his own understanding of Pagan sun gods who also were saviors. In fact, Constantine carried on the Roman tradition of Sol Invictus. He wasn’t even baptized until on his death bed. Certainly, he was far from being an exemplary Christian Emperor. He was ruthless and it’s likely he chose Christianity in order to try to prop up the Empire that was already starting to show hints of weakening. The major contribution he made was that in legalizing Christianity he encouraged a legalistic approach to defining Christianity. Orthodoxy is rooted in this legalistic tradition.

Eusebius became the Emperors official propagandist and is now known as the first major Church historicist. However, modern academics have shown that he was very loose with the truth. It was a common practice amongst the Church Fathers to lie and deceive partly because people in general at the time were less idealistic about objective truth. Also, the common style of debate was aggressively polemical. I’ve read that the first few centuries of Christianity created more scriptural forgeries and alterations than almost any other period of Western history. The early Christians were quite industrious in manufacturing their religion.

It should be noted that by the fourth century, Christianity had changed quite a bit. The earliest Christian commentators were considered heretical by the end of the second century, and the Christian commentators of the third century were also starting to seem suspect by the fourth century heresiologists. Christianity was evolving very quickly. By the time Christianity was legalized, Christians were beginning to forget their own origins. The sects that were based on the earliest commentaries were now heretical. Heresiology was the foundation of orthodoxy. As an example, Basilides wrote the earliest commentaries of any Christian. He was alive in the first century and would’ve known the very first Christians. Guess who destroyed his work? Later Christians. If there ever was a single original Christianity, the fighting between Christians very well may have entirely annihalated it by the third century. And by the fourth and fifth centuries, the Church Fathers were creating creeds that probably had only a vague connection to the beliefs of first century Christians.

Anyways, the Nicene Creed set forth the doctrine of the Trinity… which by the way has no scriptural foundation as the Trinity was Pagan in origin. Augustine’s understanding of the Trinity came from Neo-Platonism. But not all Christians believed in a Trinity. Arianism was the major opposing opinion and is named after one of the dissenting voices at the Council of Nicea. Some of the Emperors of the fourth century were Arian Christians. Arianism had become quite popular and was probably the single biggest issue of the fourth century and would survive for several more centuries.

In the middle of the fourth century, Julian the Apostate temporarily revived Paganism as the official state religion when Augustine was a child. Besides the still strong traditions of Paganism, there were many traditions of Christianity. Possibly the largest (psuedo-) Christian tradition in the world at that time was Manichaeism. I say ‘pseudo’ because Mani included many influences, but still it was Christian. The Manichaean Christ was worshipped as a solar deity and this was a major component of Augustine’s early education in Christianity.

Astrology and astro-theology in general was a major force in the ancient world. Many early Christians referred to Jesus as Sol, and it was a practice within the early Catholic church to pray towards the rising sun. The early Christian allegorists were aware of the astrotheological symbolism within Christianity. Augustine certainly would’ve been aware of this as well. It was through the allegorical interpretations of Ambrose that Judeo-Christian scripture began to seem respectable to Augustine. Ambrose had connected Jesus to the sun, but Augustine denied this connection. So, sun worship was still a major issue within the Church even as Catholicism was coming into power.

The distinction between Christianity and Paganism wasn’t absolutely clear at that time because Christianity and the Roman Empire grew up together. The two were inseparable. Augustine admitted that Christianity began before Jesus in earlier religions. This was a Neo-Platonic view of Christianity that Augustine was less accepting of later in life. Even Eusebius the greatest Christian propagandist who ever lived admitted to the similarities between Christianity and Paganism. These similarities were so obvious that it was pointless in trying to deny them. Unlike modern Christians, many of the early Church Fathers had educations in Paganism. Anyways, in the ancient world it gave a religion respectability to show that it has its roots in older traditions. There was no more embarassment in admitting Christianity had Pagan roots than in admitting it had Jewish roots. However, in the fourth century, it was starting to become more important to explain it away. Christianity needed to justify its growing dominance, and so it became necessary to increasingly distinguish itself from Paganism. It would take until the sixth century for Catholicism to destroy all of the institutions of Classical Paganism.

Along with this, it became necessary for Catholic orthodoxy to distinguish itself from the diverse traditions of Christianity. Catholicism was only barely becoming the dominant form of Christianity in the fourth century. Basically, all of the heresies named in the second and third centuries were still around. The Marcionites and the Valentinians were the most influnential sects of early Christianity and they were still living traditions. Gnosticism was everywhere and it was rather difficult to distinguish it from orthodoxy as there was much cross-pollination. Augustine himself was a good example of cross-polination as he first seriously studied Christianity as a Manichaean Gnostic. That might be why he was critical of the Old Testament before meeting Ambrose. The New Testament was originally canonized by the Gnostic Marcion in order to create a Christian canon separate from and opposed to the Jewish scripture.

Along with the early heresies, new ones were also popping up. Two traditions that Augustine fought to make heretical were Donatism and Pelagianism. The Donatists were a schism from Augustine’s homeland of North Africa. The Donatists believed that once someone had denied Catholicism they shouldn’t be allowed back into the Church. This relates to Pelagianism as well. Pelagius was the same age as Augustine and he also preached the necessity of believers being held responsible for their actions. Augustine opposed these two groups because he held the fatalistic belief that everyone was born a sinner. As such, believers and clergy shouldn’t be expected to be morally better than anyone else. Augustine’s created the Christian foundations for the theory of just war in his criticisms of the Donatists. His oratorical and legal arguments led to the declaration of heresy against the Donatists and their harsh persecution which he only partly protested against. These heresies, however, would continue to attract adherents for centuries to come.

In 379, Theodosius I became Roman Emperor. He united the Eastern and Western Empire and was the last Emperor to rule both. Also, he made the Nicene Creed the official state religion. Augustine was still a Manichaean at this time and this must’ve influenced his later decision in 386 to convert to Catholicism. In 381, Theodosius I began to inhibit Paganism. In 388, he began the persecution and destruction of Paganism. This was the Catholicism that Augustine converted to and which he helped to support.

After Theodosius reign, the beginning of the fifth century was more of the same. The last remnants of Egyptian religion was destroyed. Also, Hypatia (the last great Pagan teacher, philosopher, and mathematician) was killed by a Christian mob. I don’t know what Augustine’s opinion was about this destruction of Pagan culture all around him, but he certainly took notice of the sacking of Rome. Rome was attacked by the Visigoths who were Arian Christians. Augustine wrote The City of God in response to the fall of Rome because Pagans were blaming Christians for this event. At the end of his life, the Arian Vandals were ravaging Roman Africa. Augustine was on his deathbed in Hippo when it was overrun by Vandals.

Augustine’s Guilty Conscience

I have some more thoughts about Augustine.

Cicero's Hortensius was supposedly influential on Augustine. I get the sense that it was one of his earliest experiences of the power of rational argument. Like Cicero, Augustine was trained in Greek philosophy and oratory. I was reading that Hortensius somehow led to Augustine's eventual dissatisfaction with Manichaeism. Hortensius is now a lost text and so I don't understand the impact it had, but apparently it caused Augustine to doubt the worthiness of Manichaean dualism. Some people criticize Gnostic dualism because it presents too harsh of a view of reality. However, for Augustine, I guess it seemed too lenient and accepting. It didn't make sin personal enough for his taste. Augustine felt unable to separate his sense of identity from his sense of guilt. The Manichaeans believed there was purely good divine spark that was the true Self.

There is one aspect of Manichaeism that I didn't come across in my researching about Augustine. The Manichaean religion divided believers into two categories. There were the general adherents of the faith and there were the ascetic monastic class. The latter was the more desirable way of life, but Manichaeanism allowed that not everyone was capable of asceticism. The average believer lessened the sin by supporting the monks. This sounds like the Eastern tradition of monasticism which is quite probable as Mani had included Buddhism as an aspect of his religion. That is another element I haven't seen mentioned by any commentaries about Augustine. As a devout Manichaean for 9 years, Augustine would've become familiar with Buddhist ideas. That is interesting to consider how Buddhism combined with Gnosticism would've created the framework for Augustine's understanding of his strong mistrust of fleshly desires.

What is truly interesting is that I get a sense of an inner division within Augustine when he criticizes Manichaeism. I suspect he is actually criticizing his younger self and attempting to distance himself from the faith of his earliest spiritual longings. Nine years in a religion is no small potatoes, and this especially true considering that it was a religion falling out of favor. I read that it was even somewhat dangerous to be Manichaean at that time. It's possible fear for his life played a part in his conversion to the much safer faith of Catholicism. Let me get back to my point about his motivation to criticize his younger self. Even though he was a member for many years, he never became a monk. This must've been part of what made him feel guilty. He was a young guy with normal sexual desires and yet Manichaeism idealized abstinence. He felt unable to control his sexual desire and ended up blaming Manichaeism. Strangely, he criticized Manichaeism by projecting his own sense of weakness onto it.

"I still thought that it is not we who sin but some other nature within us. It flattered my pride to think that I incurred no guilt and, when I did wrong, not to confess it... I preferred to excuse myself and blame this unkown thing which was in me but was not part of me. The truth, of course, was that it was all my own self, and my own impiety had divided me against myself. My sin was all the more incurable because I did not think myself a sinner." - Confessions, Book V, Section 10.

I want to point out how Augustine's criticism of Manichaeism summarizes Pelagius' criticism of determinism. Pelagius actually used Augustine's writings to defend his position. However, Augustine later came to embrace determinism and claimed that Pelagius was misinterpreting his earlier writings. I personally suspect that this was the apologist in Augustine backtracking in order to defend orthodoxy. As he had to earlier distance himself from Manichaeism, he now had to distance himself from his own criticisms of Manichaeism.

He ended up creating a convoluted theology to make sense of all of this. Basically, freewill existed prior to the fall. And, as we all have our natures grounded in the soul of Adam, we to are guilty for Adam's fall. So, we are guilty the moment we're born because we somehow mystically partook of Adam's sin before we were born, but magically because of this sin once we're born we no longer have freewill. It's the logic of an apologist using sophistry to create a political justification for the persecution of their opponent. You have to give Augustine credit for his ability to pull the most absurd arguments out of his ass and present it in such a way that it almost sounds like it makes sense.

The other method that Augustine (and many heresiologists) used was to misrepresent his opponents. Pelagianism became exaggerated as meaning a denial of God's grace, but Pelagius never denied this. Pelagius merely said we're responsible for our actions which seems rather commonsense, but commonsense was an affront to orthodoxy and the latter won the battle. In the long run, though, the Catholic church agreed that Augustine went too far in his fatalism. It's significant to point out that fatalism was sometimes an accusation against Gnosticism and this attitude of Augustine may be a carryover from his own Gnostic background.

Let me return to Augustine's personal sense of guilt. He felt lustful even though he had a 16 year monogamous heterosexual relationsip. The guilt was because it wasn't respectabel as she was his mistress, but today we'd simply call their relationship a common law marriage. They even had a child together. The child died and as far as I know the child was unbaptised which puts an intriguing twist on Augustine's theology as he beleived unbaptised children were damned. I can't find much about this child, but it very well might've contributed to his dissatisfaction with Manichaeism and his life with his "mistress". Just imagine how different Christianity could've been if Augustine had lived a happy life as a father and husband.

Augustine's understanding of morality was a bit demented. In order to become Christian, he left his 16 year long monogamous relationship. He saw it as a sin to stay in a monogamous relationship. This is obviously his Manichaeism sense of guilt rearing its ugly head. Augustine apparently lived a rather tame existence and yet felt guilty. He wasn't a hedonist; he didn't eat gluttonously he wasn't a drunkard; and he wasn't promiscuous. I wonder if he felt that he somehow inherited the guilt of his promiscuous father. This would also explain his two-faced relationship to the intellectual ability he also inherited from his father. In today's world, Augustine probably would be put on anxiety medication. The guy had a near paranoid sense of guilty conscience.

Unfortunately, he never felt guilty about his later support of oppression and persecution. He obviously was very talented at projecting his immense guilty conscience onto his opponents and then made sure they were punished accordingly. It was war, and the guilty must convert, must submit... or die!

I'll now try to explain Augustine's theological understanding about Original Sin.
There is the intelligable and the sensible. The world of the senses is private and isolated. Hence, the individual is inevitably sinful and the divine wisdom can only be attained through the institutionally-substantiated public rituals. Our being trapped in the physical world isn't directly inevitable as in Manichaeism, but is indirectly inevitable because of Original Sin. Original Sin is the collective evil that can only be countered by the collective good (i.e., the Roman Catholic Church). The individual is merely a passive battlefield.

The practical implications ultimately don't appear all that different than Manichaeism except in the utter denunciation of freewill (after birth that is). Unlike Manichaeism, the individual soul is only tenuously connected to the divine and the only hope is the Church's demand of complete submission. In some ways, the Christian soul is even more trapped in the body than is the Manichaean soul. A difference is that Original Sin isn't a permanent evil. Someday, evil will be completely annihalated as evil is fundamentally nothing more than a denial of good and thus without substantiality (but I don't know how this fits into Augustine's belief that only an elect will be saved). Neither Mankind nor God is responsible for evil, and yet (in The City of God) Augustine defends against criticism that God does interfere in history in order to teach. God has absolute freewill and is absolutely innocent. There is an element of Neo-Platonism mixed in here that is reminiscent of some Gnostics.

Augustine's concept of soul is neither of the substance of the body nor of God. Manichaeism claimed the soul was a trapped divine spark, but Augustine believed the soul in some sense Neo-Platonically chooses its descent (freewill leading to Original Sin). The human soul alone is responsible for moral evil in the world because human will can lead only to sin. On the other hand, only God through His Grace is responsible for lifting the soul out of sin. It's the mutable nature of the soul that allows this transformation. The sould is mutable because it is a created temporal entiry.

Augustine's theology is mostly rhetorical in trying to persuade people towards orthodoxy. He leaves many aspects unresolved and doesn't create a coherent philosophy. Despite his idealizing of the rational mind over the passions, he doesn't believe that intellect can resolve theological issues. For the most part, the individual can't prove most things and so must trust the proper authorities. He affirms a vague Neo-Platonic intuition, but blind faith is more primary. God has foreknowledge and so our choices are predetermined from God's view, but we're still responsible for our moral choices even though our severely limited individual will inevitably leads to sin. Essentially, everyone is guilty and if you don't feel guilty then you're guilty of not feeling guilty. Humanity is collectively responsible for Adam's Fall. The significance of holding onto this tenuous concept of freewill is in order to keep God unsullied, but freewill as such serves no practical purpose. Freewill is just an abstract concept that exists in the past.

Augustine became grimly pessimistic in his latter life. He saw humanity as comprised of Massa Damnata where only a few elect were predestined to be saved. He comes to a view that is more confusing and unappealing than the Manichaeism he turned away from. Augustine the young Christian convert and Augustine the old bitter heresiologist quite likely wouldn't have agreed on a whole lot. This evolution from hope to pessimism reflected the times. Christianity had likewise evolved in Augustine's life from the optimism of being newly legalized to the Fall of Catholic-ruled Rome.

The bitterness of the aging Augustine would create the groundwork for Catholicism during the coming centuries of the Dark Ages. The Grace of God is inscrutable and unmerited, and this offered a rationalization to the unquestioned authority of the Catholic Church. The Church saw itself as a light in a dark world. Like Augustine, the Church doesn't passively accept its role. In opposition to the passive relation of Mankind to God, the Church politicians take a very aggressive relation to the general population. If most of the population is damned by God with no hope of being saved, then it doesn't lead to an attitude of respect and compassion.

Greek tradition emphasizes the circular and universal. Patterns repeat and patterns reflect the universal. Aristotle thought poetry was more philosophical than history because it is concerned with universals. Quite differently, the Judeo-Christian tradition emphasizes the linear and unique. Jesus is unique and singular, and thus this demonstrates a more limited view of salvation. The Jews hoped for a messiah that would save them alone, and Augustine believed only an elect would be saved. As such, there is no universal salvation, no repeating pattern of salvation playing out throughout all of history.

Augustine's development was largely from the Greek tradition to the Judeo-Christian. He read widely in Pagan literature, and after his conversion it took him many years to catch up in his reading of Judeo-Christian scriptures. The Neo-Platonic optimism faded and the only other main tradition within Christianity was Gnosticism. In Augustine's case, this meant he increasingly turned back to Manichaean ideas.