Modern christianity is false

[MindFreak]

Personally I find any arguement for the OT being God's rendition of the events as they actually occured to be ridiculous. As there is no evidence or even any reasonable logic to suggest it.

Your definately right, the OT coupled with the Mesopotamian myths is an excellent resource as well as a very interesting read.

Also, the Epic of Gilgamesh is not the only other big source for mesopotamian myths. There are many other mesopotamian epics and other writings. Although the Epic of Gilgamesh is the most well known.

Off Topic but the term Semetic actually applies to a family of language not a race of people.

[Gandalf]

Well, yes but it does imply a common cultural origin as well so that many 'semitic' peoples, like Arabs, jews 'phonecians' and so on share a similar history and cultural heritage, allthough i agree with you technically!

For this reason I find the term 'anti-semitic' to be a bit inexact, because Arabs are also classed as 'semitic' as well as jews. And both these groups share a common heritage in that they both conquered the older Sumerian kingdoms and adopted many of their cultural traits from them over the course of the 2nd millenium bc.

Doug

[MindFreak]

I'm new here but I must say I already enjoy reading your posts Doug.

I've read that there may have been little to no distinction between the Sumerians and the Akkadians. I wish I could remember more of what I read. Too much of the Halfling's leaf seems to affect your short-term memory. I'm sure Gandalf the Grey can understand

[Rob]

Veeeery interesting. So Doug, how do you see the kabalah and its root fitting into all this, did that come from Sumeria too do you think? A lot of people think kabalah come originally from Egypt (got a mate researching this at the moment)(and before that Atlantis...), in which case they would have taken it with them when they left with Moses. Or maybe I am getting Israelites and Hebrews muddled up......weren't they different back then?
cheers!
Rob

[Gandalf]

I'm not an expert on the mystery traditions, but i do know that the Jews received the origins of their mystery traditions from their exile in Babylon in the 6th century bc, a most productive period actually, as it was here that the jews came into contact with the Chaldean Magi and the Babylonian preisthood and there was a lot of dialogue and exchange of ideas. After the Persian conquest the jews were allowed back (although many decided to remain in Babylon) and they took these mysteries back with them to Judea.. these ideas were further developed over the centuries developing into a fully fledged jewish mystical tradition.. the zohar. The Kaballah is part of this. So it has its roots going back to Babylon yes, but the jews developed this and after a few centuries it became a distinctive system in its own right.

I mention the stay in Babylon being productive, because it was here, with the jews exposure to the Babylonian priesthood and the chaldean Magi, that the jews took up the idea of fomulating a hereditary priesthood, like they had seen in Babylon. Before this they had none.

It was also in Babylon that the jews were first exposed to the Zoroastian concept of judgement and an afterlife of heaven (Pardes) or hell.
Before this, jews only had a vague notion of afterlife that was not based on judgement in any form. All souls went to 'Sheol' a vague afterlife location that was little different from the 'Hades' model followed by most cultures of the time.
It was also from Zoroastianism that the concept of  'Religious Duelism' forst entered Jewish thought, that the world was a battleground of opposite forces of light and dark. Before this there was no  never-ending battle between supernatural forces of good and evil, rather Yaweh was good and evil actions were down to men. The concept of this supernatural evil was developed and allowed the jews to explain  later misfortunes and this development also paved the way for the concept of Messiahs and such like.

The Babylonian impact on judaism should not be underestimated in the formulation of late judaism, esp. seeing the role this would play in later christianity and of course islam.

Doug

PS I see where you get the Egyptian connection from. This is due to later mystery traditions, many of which are based on Hermeticism, which developed from the 3rd century bc  and reached its height around the 2nd century ad. This was made use of various earlier traditions, including jewish mystical traditions.. There was probably a fair amount of mutual development with ideas passing between Hellenised egyptian mysteries and jewish ones.

[Rob]

Hey Doug! Thanks for all that, I'd love to be able to discuss it with you, but I'm just too damn clueless on these things!
so cheers!

[Beth]

Hey Doug,

The biggest problem with your recap of ancient Judaism is your reliance on the Bablyonian exile of the sixth century bce actually being an event in Ancient Near Eastern history.  This requires the biblical Book of Ezra for verification which is only a one-source check system.  This is not good science or good history.  For this, we must work with what we know for sure----not something that may or may not be the case.

There is, however another possible explanation and this requires the consideration of things that we do know for sure:

1) The oldest known complete collection of the bible is actually the Greek Septuagint (circa mid-third century BCE)--not the Hebrew Bible.  The first collection of Hebrew biblical books isn't found until the late first-to-mid second century of the current era (and then in its current form not until the seventh-eighth century CE.)  It is the Greek Septuagint that was also the primary source text for the writers of the New Testament (which was also a collection of Greek texts.)

Among the Dead Sea Scrolls there were certainly Semitic translations of certain biblical books, in part and in whole, but there were also copies of these same books (plus many more) that were written in Greek.  Scholars have assumed, based primarily upon biblical tradition, that the Septuagint was a Greek translation of an original Hebrew version.  Since there is no real evidence that this was the case, it could very well have been the case that the Semitic fragments found at Qumran, as well as the later Hebrew bible were both Semitic translations of a Greek original.  There are a lot of reasons why this theory is actually the most likely one, such as:

2) Most all of the Jewish writings that we have (outside of the bible) are all written in Greek, by Greek authors for Greek speaking people.  These writings come to us from Greco Jewish writers primarily living in Alexandria Egypt, from as early as the mid-third century BCE and moreover, regardless of what popular opinion would have us believe, Palestinian Jews of the first century (which includes the earliest Christians) were also primarily Greek speaking people--not Aramaic.  The Targums of the first and second centuries CE have been assumed to be translations of Hebrew originals, but they too could have been translations & interpretative paraphrases of the Greek Septuagint!  Again, working with what we know for sure, the Septuagint was available and known to be used in the first century, but a Hebrew Bible is not.

3) While the biblical narratives speak of a 'nomadic people' which we use to explain the vast array of other myths resonant within the biblical narratives, the Greeks were also known for their travels around the Mediterranian, the Near East and even into India. The Greek mysteries are also well known to contain elements that find resonance from Sumerian, Persian, Egyptian and other surrounding mystery traditions.  According to the extensive work of E.R. Goodenough, Judaism in the centuries previous to the turn of the new millenium actually became a religion through the absorption of elements from all of the known mystery traditions--most especially the Greek mysteries--and by the first century CE, Judaism had become the vessel through which many of the ancient mysteries had been preserved.  

4) Since these same ancient Jews were actually Greek speaking people, then Judaism could well have started out as a Greek membership of the mystery traditions, and eventually grew to the point that its practices became more exoteric rather than esoteric.  Perhaps the advent of the earliest Christians was actually a response to Judaism losing its esotericism, or even the opposite, that the earliest Christians wanted to teach these esoteric mysteries to the world at large. Either way, what we know for sure is that we have Greek speaking people, using a Greek Bible, who were living in a Greek world that was rapidly becoming a Roman world.

5) How does this theory explain the Jewish, Christian and Islamic attachment to the scriptures as the history of an ancient Semitic people? First, given that billions of people have taken the Old and New Testaments as history for almost 2,000 years, it is not hard to accept the fact that human nature allows the belief in myth as real history. Second, this issue was being debated as early as the third-century bce between Jewish Greeks and non-Jewish Greeks. The same lack of historical evidence was the main contention of non-Greeks, and to solve this delimma the Jewish Greeks made the claim that Greek philosophical wisdom was actually given to Moses by God at Sinai, and only then was it available for the Greeks to claim as their own.  Moreover, that Plato and Pythagoras had access to the scripture in Greek previous to the translation of the Septuagint!

So, in short, what we know for sure is that the earliest Jewish writers were actually Greek.  The earliest Bible was a Greek Bible.  The biblical texts could easily have been written by Greek scholars that were striving to preserve the Ancient Near Eastern myths, (as well as some of the actual history of the area,) within an Ancient Near Eastern context through a fictional people they referred to as the Hebrews/Israelites.  This could also have been a way in which to preserve the ANE mysteries as well.

There is, of course, a great deal more to all of this, for just beneath the surface of the narratives there are other layers of information that are also verifiable through ancient Greco Jewish writers (and later Kabbalists,) but what I have shown above is actually--in my opinion--the most workable and the most logical theory for the real history of the bible.  

This theory also helps to open a new paradigm for the many unanswered questions that seem to be largely ignored within the currently accepted system. This is due to the fact that within that system the questions are actually unanswerable.  IMO, it is the system that is in error, not the many questions.

Peace,
Beth

[hermit1950]

I really havnt had a chance to check this out in any detail but perhaps one of you may be interested and hopefully it will help shed a little light on the basic religions-the B book etc.-

http://www.thelostbooks.com/

                                    L/L Hermit

[hermit1950]

Here's something else you may find interesting -
Especially if you had any religious (not spiritual) trainning and have since experianced OBE's etc.

Not that there arent many many spiritual people in the churches because there are but its been my exp. that they are few and far between in most org.religions.

Parts of what is in the bible," after knowing what I was taught as a child that it ment," and what reading thease bible versus now after OBE's etc is so obvious.Other versus are not.

http://www.bibleufo.com/zindex2.htm

I personally really enjoyed what Ive read so far and had a few pretty rushy internal exp.s while in the process.

                                      L&L Hermit

[katrinamaria]

I disagree with you. Versions of the Bible have been found in it's original language, and any christian book store will help you find books on the differences between the old bibles and the new ones. I think that it is foolish to condemn any religion, everyone has their own beliefs you know. I could easily except the fact that you do not believe in modern Christianity, but I think it's wrong to act like it is "Fake", or "False" just because you chose to not believe in it. I believe in God, and would tell it to anyone, but I would not look down at a Buddhist for believing in Buddha.