My views on religion

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There were many ‘messiahs’ around the year zero. Jesus was only one of them.



Right after Jesus died, another messiah got very popular: Simon Magus. This messiah got so famous, even the New Testament discusses him, in Acts of the Apostles:
Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, "This man is the divine power known as the Great Power." They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his magic. (Acts 8:9-11)

The early Christian text ‘Acts of Peter’ vividly describes how the apostle Peter gets stiff competition from Simon. Simon’s fans call him the Christ and believe Simon can fly, raise the dead, heal the sick and do many other miracles (Acts of Peter IV).

But in the end, Simon Magus sadly dropped from the sky during one of his miracle flights. According to Acts of Peter, the apostle Peter had gunned him down with a prayer. Simon broke his leg and was abandoned by his worshippers.

In the bible, we read how in the end, Simon converts to Christianity himself (Acts 8:12). But given the sturbornness of the man, this doesn’t seem too likely.

Meanwhile, Roman and Greek people had their own 1st century messiah: Apollonius of Tyana.

This follower of Pythagoras taught in Europa and Asia and performed many ‘messiah-like’ miracles and healings. On one occasion, Apollonius was said to have brought a dead girl back to life. Worshippers believed that after Apollonius died in 95, angels carried him to heaven, much like Jesus.

For several centuries, Roman emperors tried to present Apollonius as the ‘alternative to Christ’, when trying to push back Christianity. Well: they failed, obviously.

A little while later, around 125, Israeli Jews suddenly embraced yet another, new messiah: Simon Bar Kochba.

This charismatic was a rebel leader who kicked out the Romans in the blink of a eye, and so liberated Israel. Not surprisingly, this convinced many Jews that not Jesus, but Simon was the savior.

Simon himself denounced Jesus, and persuaded his flock to do the same. ‘Bar Kochba’ means ‘son of the star’, a reference to Numbers 24:17 – “A star will come out of Jacob”.

But after three years, Roman soldiers overran Israel and killed Simon Bar Kohba. It’s one of those history-altering events! Who knows which messiah we would have worshipped today, if it hadn’t happened.

There were many more, less well-known 'messiahs' around when Jesus lived.

Jesus himself met at least one of them: John the Baptist. The Baptist had many followers himself, who believed he was the savior.

Amazingly, several ten thousands of these so-called Mandaeans still exist today around the Iran-Iraqi border. Mandaeans denounce Jesus, but worship... John the Baptist.

source:
Secret bible: Rivals of Jesus (NGC 2006)


so...there were a lot of christs and messiahs going around. that one happened to stick is nothing more than a good example of the shotgun effect...and no, i'm not refering to the later years where christianity was enforced by the sword.

Interestingly, the wine-and-bread ritual (the eucharist) wasn't new at the time Jesus lived. The Persians had been performing the ritual for about 4,000 years!

The eucharist was performed to honor the Persian sun god Mithra. At the time Jesus lived, it was a very popular ritual!

Mithra had many parallels with Jesus. And one of the most striking ones was the last supper. Mithra was also believed to have held a last supper with his (twelve!) apostles before dying and going to heaven. Mithra would have spoken:
"He who shall not eat of my body or drink of my blood, so that he may be one with me and I with him, shall not be saved."

So think about it for a while. Many centuries before Christ, Mithraists already held their own bread-and-wine ritual. They too ate bread and drank wine in remembrance of Mithra, with the wine symbolizing Mithra's blood and the bread symbolizing his body.

So, what happened? How did the ritual end up in the New Testament?

That depends on your point of view. Some believe Jesus was re-enacting the Mithra Eucharist.

Other scholars believe that the last supper didn’t take place at all. Rather, the Mithra ritual was deliberately written into the bible later, these scholars think. After all, the Mithra eucharist had proven to be a success story. It would be a bit like a web designer adding rollover buttons to a web site: you just know that it attracts people.

At least, it would also explain why there are two completely different versions of the Last Supper in the bible.

Clearly, the first church fathers had some explaining to do. After all, everybody knew that Mithra worshippers had been performing Jesus’ last supper ritual for centuries!
The early church fathers Tertullian and Justin found a nifty way out. It was the devil’s doing, they said! According to the church fathers, the devil had copied Jesus’ eucharist many centuries before it really happened. The devil would have ‘foreseen’ Jesus’ last supper.



sources:
Secret bible: Rivals of Jesus (NGC 2006)

Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy: "The Jesus Mysteries"

D. Jason Cooper: "Mithras: Mysteries and Initiation Rediscovered"

Other scholars say that the followers of Mithra crapped. When Jesus came along, so did he! Was Jesus following the Mithraic traditions? Come off it.

I would agree with you about Paul. Some were optional doctrines and some were essential doctrines. We certainly can't expect immature Christians to live to the standards of mature Christians. We all go through stages of development as Jesus matures us. I use 2 Peter 1:5-7 as the stages.
1. faith -- we all start by appropriating God's grace through faith through prayer for all things. Ask! Seek! Knock!
2. goodness -- God blesses our prayers as we DO good to others. He seduces us into kindness.
3. guidance -- divine guidance shows us what God considers to be the good thing to do.
4. transformation enables us to do that which God tells us to do. We need to put the old nature to death so we can live to the new nature.
5. hope -- we need to start investing in heaven as a form of deferred gratification.
6. godliness -- we begin to feel about things as God does, as we invest in what God likes.
7. koinonia -- God will reward us as we bless the brethren. We grow in love in this loving environment.
8. agape -- as an overflow from the love in the koinonia, we begin to love the unlovely, the spiteful, the evil. This is the final stage of Christian maturity. Now Faith, Hope and Love abide -- but the greatest of these is Love (agape).

This is why we get different things from the Bible each time we read it. The Bible hasn't changed; we have changed. Oftentimes the Lord will give us a "theme of the week" and emphasize a certain teaching for the whole week. God is good. He loves us with an unfathomable love. It will be SO good to be with him in heaven!

what a compelling counterargument. "they're just pointing out things that are the same!"



uh...the eucharastic story is supposed to be a little more key than taking a dump. but whatever...the dump was real, the bread and wine.....probably just copying earlier religions so that he could be cool.

Thank you TimT for this helpful summary. Or perhaps I should thank Peter (though the concluding part of point 8 is from the end of the thirteenth chapter of St Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. More importantly still I should thank the Lord.

Isaiah book of, a major prophetic book of the Old Testament, noted for its description of the comming Messiah as God's Suffering Servant. Because of it's lofty portrayal of God and his purpose of salvation, the book is sometimes called the "fifth Gospel".
Yeh I've read it. I found it hard going, but it gives us a better understanding of God's purpose.

Sorry that I don't have time now to discuss this, thanks Alexanderthesolitary and Tim T for the great content, enjoying your input thanks,
Froggo.

Did you know that the Old Testament prophets were sorted descending by size? Isaiah is the first one.... For another, smaller prophet, try Ezekiel. Jesus quoted it a lot. It is also highly Messianic.

I was not aware Jesus quoted Ezekiel especially frequently. Could you provide some examples? While shorter than Isaiah I found the latter easier to read through if in regular daily sections averaging five chapters. Yes, I have found that the way mercy and judgement appear side by side, for one thing, to clarify (hopefully - I could be misinterpreting!) my understanding of God's purpose. A current theology assignment is on the Suffering Servant passages. I was aware of the "Fifth Gospel". Isaiah and Psalms in terms of frequency of quotes in the New Testament generally, not just Gospels, appear prominent; the five books of the Torah or Pentateuch also more frequently than always acknowledged. Revelation seems to draw on both Isaiah and Ezekiel, if that is not putting it blasphemously. Not all the "minor" prophets are in descending order. Also in the Hebrew schema Joshua, Judges and I and II Samuel and I and II Kings are included in the Nevi'im or Prophets, while Lamentations and Daniel are included in Ketuvim or simply "Writings" along with material as miscellaneous as Chronicles, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, etc. We follow the Greek (Septuagint) order minus Apocrypha. Sorry to be pedantic and boastful. These are habits that should be resisted.

I would like to expand upon the stages of maturity with the parable of the seeds. The first seed that were scattered landed upon the compacted dirt of the path and couldn't get to first base. These are the people who couldn't make head or tails of #1, faith.

The second seed fell in a scab of dirt on a rock; they wilted at the first time of adversity. These are the people who couldn't understand the business of #5, investing in heaven.

The third seed fell among weeds that sapped it down and kept it from bearing fruit. These are the people who try to also have "koinonia" with the world or their secular families. This is not conducive to being immersed in an environment of true #7, koinonia.

The fourth seed went the whole way and arrived at the point of bearing the fruit of agape that God considers so precious.

A lot of people respect the example of Mother Teresa, despite her somewhat odd theology. From her biographies, you can pick out when she went through each of the 8 stages of maturity. God is not so picky about doctrine as He is the fruit of love.

The liberal version of Christianity either redefines doing good deeds as "agape" or commands people to "love" by their own self-will. Both of these are anathema to God because they get in the way of gaining true "agape."

When Jesus referred to himself as the "Son of Man", he was referring to Ezekiel who used that phrase 90 times. Ezekiel 34 is about the shepherd and his sheep, which Jesus uses a lot. I am sure there are others, but I'm looking forward to an afternoon nap.

Actually, Ezekiel was addressed by God as "son of man" in the generic sense of human. "One like a Son of Man" in a Messianic sense is from Daniel. And yes, Jesus of course used this self-designation, possibly more than any other (though I am willing to stand corrected on that part). Incidentally, what is the evangelical explanation for Daniel's chronology? I ask this in a spirit of wishing to learn, not out of scepticism.

I must admit to ignorance of seminary jargon. Could you please rewrite this at an 8th grade level?

What's the explanation for why the succession (sorry; don't they teach that word in lower secondary school?) of kings - Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar (not to be confused with Belteshazzar, Daniel's Babylonian pseudonym) "Darius the Mede" and Cyrus - is rather at odds with both most histories and indeed with the other Biblical works? Sorry if that comes across as rather aggressive for a fellow-Christian. It was Cyrus the Great of Persia who conquered Babylon (as foreseen by Isaiah and narrated in the end of II Chronicles and the start of Ezra). He was formerly a vassal of the Medes, a related Iranian people to some extent later assimilated (though Acts still speaks of "Parthians, Medes and Elamites" - the latter are an ancient people inhabiting south-western Iran, speaking originally a tongue neither Indo-European like Persian, Meian, Sanskrit and most surviving European - Basque and Finnish are exceptions - Iranian and Indian - India Indian, not to be confused with native Americans - nor Semitic like Babylonian, Assyrian (these two dialects of Akkadian) Amorite, Aramean, Hebrew, Arabic, etc. The Parthians by that time - New Testament times - ruled the eastern part of what had been the Achaemenid Persian Empire and had intermediately been ruled by the Seleucid Dynasty in the aftermath of Alexander's conquests and death). Darius, or rather the Persian equivalent (they tend to be known in Western histories by either Hellenised (assimilated to Greek patterns) names like Xerxes, also known as Ahasuerus in a Latinate form to the Hebrew Ahashverosh actually used in the book of Esther, or Latinate versions of Hellenised versions of Persian nameslike Cyrus and Darius) was the name of three Achaemenid Persian kings. Sorry this post is rather out of control. Describing Belshazzar as king is probably a fair call, even if regent in his father Nabuna'id or Nabonidus' absence. However, I think there were some other Babylonian kings between Nebuchadnezzar and Nabuna'id.

Last edited by AlexandertheSolitary on 30 May 2007, 11:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Here, give this a whirl; Legibility website

Well, most of my posts are more legible than that last one. Sorry. I think I brought too many other tangents in; I hope some others found those interesting. That Order of Saint Patrick you are involved with sounds very interesting, though Campus Crusades seems a rather tactless name; I suppose Billy Graham may have begun a trend unfortunately copied by Bush. Just a little historically insensitive; sorry I am so pedantic at times. I was involved with the Christian Union when I was at La Trobe University doing my Bachelor of Arts. Ironically, since commencing my theological studies with the Melbourne College of Divinity, it was comparatively recently that I commenced going to Christian Union meetings at the University of Melbourne. Compared to nearby Ridley College (evangelical Anglican) the United Faculty of Theology (part of Melbourne College of Divinity) tends to be rather "liberal" so the Christian Union in some ways might be considered an odd combination.

The United Faculty of Theology itself incorporates Trinity College Theological School (also Anglican, though a bit more High Church than Ridley; the college is also a residential college, and provides foundational studies, hence my adding the Theological School) Uniting Church Theological Hall, and the Jesuit Theological College.

The Christian Union was ecumenical in the sense of non-denominational (the Presbyterians appeared to be prominent) though of an evangelical Protestant cast. The chapel and student lounge at La Trobe were shared with the Roman Catholics; their chaplain was Father Liam Mackle, his office neighbouring those of Helen Bell and Peter Leslie of the Christian Union. They were both Presbyterians, though Peter Leslie moved from Anglo-Catholic (High Church, sometimes derided, including by Mr Leslie, as "bells and smells" ie incense) via Pentecostal to Presbyterian. The Muslim prayer rooms were relatively nearby; I have had good conversations with some of the Muslim students.

My apologies for my tendency to ramble; I hope no one is bored. I should really get back to my essay now. I hope that you are well.