I'm probably not gonna do any major project here for Christmas. But I wanna link to some Christmas Relevant post I'd made in the past.
Pagan Winter Solstice Holidays linked to Christmas
http://tinyurl.com/PaganChristmas
http://preview.tinyurl.com/PaganChristmas
Hanukkah is a Biblical Holy Day
http://tinyurl.com/HanukkahIsBiblical
http://preview.tinyurl.com/HanukkahIsBiblical
A Hanukkah and Christmas relevant post from my SolaScripturaChristianLiberty BlogSpot blog
http://tinyurl.com/h8hyd58
http://preview.tinyurl.com/h8hyd58
Those are some of the older ones I still consider worth linking too.
https://midseventiethweekrapture.blogspot.com/2017/04/venus-could-be-star-of-bethlehem.html
https://midseventiethweekrapture.blogspot.com/2017/12/when-i-say-i-think-jesus-was-born-on.html
https://midseventiethweekrapture.blogspot.com/2017/01/i-dont-think-jesus-was-born-on.html
Saturday, December 1, 2018
Thursday, November 1, 2018
Pagan ideas compared to The Trinity
Inspiring Philosophy did a video addressing people accusing The Trinity of being Pagan called Is The Trinity Pagan?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAcDV270D_0
It’s a pretty good video, but I would say he slipped a bit in addressing the Hindu Trimurti comparison. Hinduism does have distinct personalities for Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva so saying it’s more like Modalism doesn’t really work.
The main failure of that analogy is that when you break it down, comparing Brahma to The Father and Vishnu who incarnated as Human Avatars to The Logos can make a little sense, but comparing the Holy Spirit to Shiva the God of Destruction makes no sense, their functions are literally the opposite.
And then there is the fact that this Trimurti idea developed late, I don’t think you can actually find it in the Rigveda, Ramayana or Mahabharata, and even some of those writings come after the Northern Tribes were dispersed Eastward. The Kurma Purana seems to be the earliest clear expression of it and it’s Eighth Century AD at the earliest. Christians had migrated to India from Persia at least as early as the 4th Century AD.
I also think the development of Hinduism and Buddhism may have been influenced by the Gnostics. The Manicheans had spread throughout Persia and further east. And the Mahabrahma is like the Gnostic Demiurge, a lesser creator who thinks he's the top god even though he isn't.
A closer Comparison to The Trinity would be Neo-Platonism’s concept of The One, The Intellect and the World Soul. A key distinction I’d make there is that it is mostly the Intellect emanating from The One and the World Soul emanating from The Intellect. While the Christian Trinity is much more Triangular in its relationship, in fact the Greek Orthodox would stress that the Holy Spirits proceeds from The Father not The Son.
But again, while Neo-Plaotnism draws on Plato, nothing this close to a Trinity is in Plato. Neo-Platonism is largely said to have began with Plotinus (204-270 AD) or his mentor Ammonius Saccas (175-242 AD). Tertullian (155-240 AD) had already laid out a doctrine of The Trinity pretty similar to the Nicene one before their careers started, and he was just inserting himself into a discussion Christians were already having. Theophilus of Antioch (died by 185 AD) was the first to use the term Trinity and defined it as The Father, The Logos and Sophia.
Porphyry, an Anti-Christian Neo-Platonist writer, said that Saccas’s parents had been Christians but he rejected their faith. So actually there is good reason to suspect that many similarities between Christian and Neoplatonic Philosophy came from Christians first. That said I do still believe reverence for Socrates, Plato and Aristotle has been a very bad influence on Church History.
Learning this about Saccas as I researched this post was quite interesting. It’s easy to assume Christian ides didn’t influence the secular world before Constantine, but what Constantine did was possible because Christianity was already becoming mainstream in many places. So this documentation of a Pre-Nicene Pagan writer with a Christian background is quite fascinating.
I suppose I should mention briefly the Zoka SanShin (Three Kami of Creation) from Shinto Mythology. Everything we know about Japanese mythology stems from the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki which were both early Eighth Century writings. If certain theories about the Hata Clan are true then Christians could have been an influence on Japan well before then. Though in its final form the Zoka SanShin is more like the Neoplatonist trinity then the Christian one, being more linear than triangular. And they are in no way defined as being Homusias.
https://solascripturachristianliberty.blogspot.com/2018/04/nestorianism-and-church-of-east.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAcDV270D_0
It’s a pretty good video, but I would say he slipped a bit in addressing the Hindu Trimurti comparison. Hinduism does have distinct personalities for Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva so saying it’s more like Modalism doesn’t really work.
The main failure of that analogy is that when you break it down, comparing Brahma to The Father and Vishnu who incarnated as Human Avatars to The Logos can make a little sense, but comparing the Holy Spirit to Shiva the God of Destruction makes no sense, their functions are literally the opposite.
And then there is the fact that this Trimurti idea developed late, I don’t think you can actually find it in the Rigveda, Ramayana or Mahabharata, and even some of those writings come after the Northern Tribes were dispersed Eastward. The Kurma Purana seems to be the earliest clear expression of it and it’s Eighth Century AD at the earliest. Christians had migrated to India from Persia at least as early as the 4th Century AD.
I also think the development of Hinduism and Buddhism may have been influenced by the Gnostics. The Manicheans had spread throughout Persia and further east. And the Mahabrahma is like the Gnostic Demiurge, a lesser creator who thinks he's the top god even though he isn't.
A closer Comparison to The Trinity would be Neo-Platonism’s concept of The One, The Intellect and the World Soul. A key distinction I’d make there is that it is mostly the Intellect emanating from The One and the World Soul emanating from The Intellect. While the Christian Trinity is much more Triangular in its relationship, in fact the Greek Orthodox would stress that the Holy Spirits proceeds from The Father not The Son.
But again, while Neo-Plaotnism draws on Plato, nothing this close to a Trinity is in Plato. Neo-Platonism is largely said to have began with Plotinus (204-270 AD) or his mentor Ammonius Saccas (175-242 AD). Tertullian (155-240 AD) had already laid out a doctrine of The Trinity pretty similar to the Nicene one before their careers started, and he was just inserting himself into a discussion Christians were already having. Theophilus of Antioch (died by 185 AD) was the first to use the term Trinity and defined it as The Father, The Logos and Sophia.
Porphyry, an Anti-Christian Neo-Platonist writer, said that Saccas’s parents had been Christians but he rejected their faith. So actually there is good reason to suspect that many similarities between Christian and Neoplatonic Philosophy came from Christians first. That said I do still believe reverence for Socrates, Plato and Aristotle has been a very bad influence on Church History.
Learning this about Saccas as I researched this post was quite interesting. It’s easy to assume Christian ides didn’t influence the secular world before Constantine, but what Constantine did was possible because Christianity was already becoming mainstream in many places. So this documentation of a Pre-Nicene Pagan writer with a Christian background is quite fascinating.
I suppose I should mention briefly the Zoka SanShin (Three Kami of Creation) from Shinto Mythology. Everything we know about Japanese mythology stems from the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki which were both early Eighth Century writings. If certain theories about the Hata Clan are true then Christians could have been an influence on Japan well before then. Though in its final form the Zoka SanShin is more like the Neoplatonist trinity then the Christian one, being more linear than triangular. And they are in no way defined as being Homusias.
https://solascripturachristianliberty.blogspot.com/2018/04/nestorianism-and-church-of-east.html
Monday, October 15, 2018
Dinosaurs and Dragons
You don't have to be a Six-Day Young Earth Creationist to see a connection between Dinosaurs and mythical creatures like Dragons. You can hold the mainstream view of the age of the Earth and still think a few small patches survived to Ancient or even modern times. Or you could say Ancient people stumbled upon Dinosaur fossils which helped inspire those myths, but the later option doesn't explain eye witness accounts.
However opposition to Young Earth Creationism is the only explanation I can think of for why so many insist on denying any connection exists or could exist, insisting it must be just a coincidence that man imagined Dragons and then we found the bones of creatures that fit exactly the definition of what a Dragon is. Because they love being able to casually mock Creationists with "if the Earth is only 6000 years old how come humans never saw Dinosaurs", then countless accounts of people seeing things like Dinosaurs are pointed out to them and they go "no, but..." and move the goal posts.
I'm not desperate to convert anyone to Creationism any more since I'm an Evangelical Universalist now. I just want people to know that the existence of Dinosaurs is not a sufficient reason to doubt The Bible.
Dinosaurs weren't the only things to inspire these ancient myths, they're often also allegories of more abstract things like Greed. Same as Godzilla was not inspired only by Dinosaurs but was first and foremost an allegory for the destructive power of Nuclear Weapons. Even Jurassic Park is about more then just Dinosaurs, it's also another re-imagining of Frankenstein as well as being about the evils of Capitalism.
A lot of why people feel so confident they can mock the idea of a connection is because the modern default idea of what a Dragon looks like is much more specific then what it actually used to mean, being basically Smaug and Charizard. But even in Tolkien not all Dragons looked like Smaug, Smaug represents a specific sub group, the winged Fire Drake. And the really specific look of Smaug I don't think was even precedented much before Tolkien, even Beowulf's dragon is not described quite like that in the original text. There were actually medieval bestiaries describing many different kinds of Dragons, not all of which could even be described as gigantic in size.
Yes, a lot of the images Creationists point to don't look exactly perfectly like a specific Dinosaur, just as Bugs Bunny doesn't look that much like a real bunny rabbit. Artistic depictions take liberties and oral traditions can obscure the details even when they're trying to be perfectly accurate.
http://creationwiki.org/Ancient_dinosaur_depiction
The 12th century Ta Prohm Temple near Angkor Wat in Cambodia has a carving which resemblance to a Stegasaur is way to close to be coincidental.
But for something that's a personal hypothesis of mine that takes a bit more room for interpretation, let's talk about the Tarasque.
First of all it's said to originally come from Galatia, which fits the fact that the earliest Christian Community of Southern France were people who came there from Ephesus in the 2nd Century. Now I'm not convinced Martha or the other Bethany siblings actually went to Asia Minor either, I suspect their remains are among those found at the Dominus Flevit Church on the Mont of Olives.
The most peculiar detail of the Tarasque is that it's not a Turtle but is described as having a turtle shell on it's back. I think this animal was inspired by an Ankylosaurus (the same type of Dinosaur that inspired Anguirus). This creature doesn't have a Turtle Shell on it's back but one can easily see how it might look that way to an ancient observer.
I no longer share the hostility other Creationists have to the idea of Feathered Dinosaurs. I don't think Dinosaurs evolved into modern Birds, but God could easily have created creatures that would seem to us like Lizard/Bird hybrids, just as an Ankylosaur could have been mistaken to be a hybrid of a Turtle and something else.
And once we acknowledge Feathered Dinosaurs we can realize that only adds to the amount of evidence of them being known to the Ancients. From Mesoamerican gods depicted as feathered serpents to the European examples of the Cockatrice and Basilisk. Both words have been used in translations of The Bible. Now I don't think the Hebrew word tsepha' was likely to be referring to the same thing as either of those European terms. But if you're a radical KJV onlyist like Kent Hovind, you can't then deny that what Cockatrice meant to a 1611 English speaker is something The King James Bible is claiming exists (it's right in the etymology of Cockatrice that it resembles a Rooster in some fashion). I remember watching one Kent Hovind debate where his opponent brought up the Cockatrice and Hovind just ignored it.
And now we've transitioned into talking about Dinosaurs in The Bible. I believe Seraphim was a term for Pterodactyls aka Ropens. And I mostly stand by my past speculation that Jonah was swallowed by a Sea Dinosaur. Reem (Unicorn in the KJV) however I do not think refers to a Dinosaur but probably an Auroch.
Now the big two when it comes to Dinosaurs in The Bible speculation are Behemoth and Leviathan. It boggles my mind every time someone tells me that in context' it's clearly describing a demonic creature and not a natural animal. No, it's context in Job 38-41 is as the climax of a list of normal animals, yet people keep getting away with saying it's the opposite.
Yes there are extra Biblical Jewish legends turning Behemoth and Leviathan into cosmic horrors not compatible with any real animals. That's why Paul warned us to not regard Jewish Fables. These non-Biblical ideas about Behemoth and Leviathan are partly the inspiration for Groudon and Kyogre the 3rd generation mascot Legendary Pokemon (and Rayqyaza was based on the Ziz) but none of that has any basis in Job.
I watched this YouTube video on Behemoth recently, at the very end it starts vaguely alluding to Republican politics and a Soterolgoy I no longer support, but mostly it's a pretty good video. There is little internal debate among Creationsits about what Dinosaur the Behemoth is, it's a longed neck herbivore, basically the first Dinosaur we see clearly and unobstructed in Jurassic Park, so just imagine John Williams score for that scene as you read Job 40.
Leviathan is more complicated however.
Firstly because unlike Behemoth the word does show up outside of Job, in Isaiah 27 and a couple of Psalms. Other references to Leviathan are possibly using him as an analogy for the 7 headed Dragon and/or The Beast out of the Sea of Revelation, like how Jesus uses Birds to represent Satan in the Kingdom Parables of Matthew 13, being used symbolically in some places doesn't make it not a word for a real animal. I also think Leviathan is possibly used of a Constellation in some verses. If The Ancient Hebrews had a view of the Constellations analogous to our own, then Draco, Serpens, Hydra and Cetus are all good candidates.
I think it's best to stick to Job when defining the Zoological characteristics of Leviathan. Which first of all means the words translated "piercing" and "crooked" in Isaiah 27:1 aren't used in Job 41 and so maybe descriptions of the Constellation or poetic idioms about Satan are not useful for figuring out what the real animal looked like.
Isaiah 27:1 is a really complicated verse to consider here. It could be using multiple idioms for one thing, or describing three different things, two Leviathans and a Dragon, or two things, Leviathan and a Dragon. This verse probably isn't about the actual animal anyway, but I still wanted to point that out.
If we limit our clues for the real animal to Job 41 does that weaken it's aquatic association? Not quite, verse 31 seems to say it spends some time in the sea. But it is most likely Amphibious and not purely a Sea Creature.
I have a personal hunch that the Leviathan of Job 41 could be Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. There are plenty of inaccuracies to how this Dinosaur was depicted in Jurassic Park 3, but according to this video it was indeed Amphibious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STn0CxdMIKk&t
Fire breathing, that is the big factor in objections to saying Dragons are real, including specifically Biblical ones which definitely attribute fire breathing to Leviathan and possibly but more debatably the Seraphim (there are other views of what them being called "firey" means).
The Bombardier beetle has an ability that certainly seems like shooting fire.
Skeptical analysis of such arguments for fire breathing animals often miss the point. Creationists only need the specific Biblical references to be literally true, so it doesn't matter if it actually looked like what Smaug or a Fire Type Pokemon can do.
One anti-Creationist website I was reading gave a simplified summery of the history of dragon legends and claims dragons didn't start breathing fire till the 5th century AD and none had wings till the 13th. That ignores The Bible's own descriptions of both winged serpents and Leviathan, as well as Beowulf. Basically this site wants to say Dragons didn't start resembling Dinosaurs till the 19th Century, which is an utterly absurd suggestion.
However opposition to Young Earth Creationism is the only explanation I can think of for why so many insist on denying any connection exists or could exist, insisting it must be just a coincidence that man imagined Dragons and then we found the bones of creatures that fit exactly the definition of what a Dragon is. Because they love being able to casually mock Creationists with "if the Earth is only 6000 years old how come humans never saw Dinosaurs", then countless accounts of people seeing things like Dinosaurs are pointed out to them and they go "no, but..." and move the goal posts.
I'm not desperate to convert anyone to Creationism any more since I'm an Evangelical Universalist now. I just want people to know that the existence of Dinosaurs is not a sufficient reason to doubt The Bible.
Dinosaurs weren't the only things to inspire these ancient myths, they're often also allegories of more abstract things like Greed. Same as Godzilla was not inspired only by Dinosaurs but was first and foremost an allegory for the destructive power of Nuclear Weapons. Even Jurassic Park is about more then just Dinosaurs, it's also another re-imagining of Frankenstein as well as being about the evils of Capitalism.
A lot of why people feel so confident they can mock the idea of a connection is because the modern default idea of what a Dragon looks like is much more specific then what it actually used to mean, being basically Smaug and Charizard. But even in Tolkien not all Dragons looked like Smaug, Smaug represents a specific sub group, the winged Fire Drake. And the really specific look of Smaug I don't think was even precedented much before Tolkien, even Beowulf's dragon is not described quite like that in the original text. There were actually medieval bestiaries describing many different kinds of Dragons, not all of which could even be described as gigantic in size.
Yes, a lot of the images Creationists point to don't look exactly perfectly like a specific Dinosaur, just as Bugs Bunny doesn't look that much like a real bunny rabbit. Artistic depictions take liberties and oral traditions can obscure the details even when they're trying to be perfectly accurate.
http://creationwiki.org/Ancient_dinosaur_depiction
The 12th century Ta Prohm Temple near Angkor Wat in Cambodia has a carving which resemblance to a Stegasaur is way to close to be coincidental.
First of all it's said to originally come from Galatia, which fits the fact that the earliest Christian Community of Southern France were people who came there from Ephesus in the 2nd Century. Now I'm not convinced Martha or the other Bethany siblings actually went to Asia Minor either, I suspect their remains are among those found at the Dominus Flevit Church on the Mont of Olives.
The most peculiar detail of the Tarasque is that it's not a Turtle but is described as having a turtle shell on it's back. I think this animal was inspired by an Ankylosaurus (the same type of Dinosaur that inspired Anguirus). This creature doesn't have a Turtle Shell on it's back but one can easily see how it might look that way to an ancient observer.
I no longer share the hostility other Creationists have to the idea of Feathered Dinosaurs. I don't think Dinosaurs evolved into modern Birds, but God could easily have created creatures that would seem to us like Lizard/Bird hybrids, just as an Ankylosaur could have been mistaken to be a hybrid of a Turtle and something else.
And once we acknowledge Feathered Dinosaurs we can realize that only adds to the amount of evidence of them being known to the Ancients. From Mesoamerican gods depicted as feathered serpents to the European examples of the Cockatrice and Basilisk. Both words have been used in translations of The Bible. Now I don't think the Hebrew word tsepha' was likely to be referring to the same thing as either of those European terms. But if you're a radical KJV onlyist like Kent Hovind, you can't then deny that what Cockatrice meant to a 1611 English speaker is something The King James Bible is claiming exists (it's right in the etymology of Cockatrice that it resembles a Rooster in some fashion). I remember watching one Kent Hovind debate where his opponent brought up the Cockatrice and Hovind just ignored it.
And now we've transitioned into talking about Dinosaurs in The Bible. I believe Seraphim was a term for Pterodactyls aka Ropens. And I mostly stand by my past speculation that Jonah was swallowed by a Sea Dinosaur. Reem (Unicorn in the KJV) however I do not think refers to a Dinosaur but probably an Auroch.
Now the big two when it comes to Dinosaurs in The Bible speculation are Behemoth and Leviathan. It boggles my mind every time someone tells me that in context' it's clearly describing a demonic creature and not a natural animal. No, it's context in Job 38-41 is as the climax of a list of normal animals, yet people keep getting away with saying it's the opposite.
Yes there are extra Biblical Jewish legends turning Behemoth and Leviathan into cosmic horrors not compatible with any real animals. That's why Paul warned us to not regard Jewish Fables. These non-Biblical ideas about Behemoth and Leviathan are partly the inspiration for Groudon and Kyogre the 3rd generation mascot Legendary Pokemon (and Rayqyaza was based on the Ziz) but none of that has any basis in Job.
I watched this YouTube video on Behemoth recently, at the very end it starts vaguely alluding to Republican politics and a Soterolgoy I no longer support, but mostly it's a pretty good video. There is little internal debate among Creationsits about what Dinosaur the Behemoth is, it's a longed neck herbivore, basically the first Dinosaur we see clearly and unobstructed in Jurassic Park, so just imagine John Williams score for that scene as you read Job 40.
Leviathan is more complicated however.
Firstly because unlike Behemoth the word does show up outside of Job, in Isaiah 27 and a couple of Psalms. Other references to Leviathan are possibly using him as an analogy for the 7 headed Dragon and/or The Beast out of the Sea of Revelation, like how Jesus uses Birds to represent Satan in the Kingdom Parables of Matthew 13, being used symbolically in some places doesn't make it not a word for a real animal. I also think Leviathan is possibly used of a Constellation in some verses. If The Ancient Hebrews had a view of the Constellations analogous to our own, then Draco, Serpens, Hydra and Cetus are all good candidates.
I think it's best to stick to Job when defining the Zoological characteristics of Leviathan. Which first of all means the words translated "piercing" and "crooked" in Isaiah 27:1 aren't used in Job 41 and so maybe descriptions of the Constellation or poetic idioms about Satan are not useful for figuring out what the real animal looked like.
Isaiah 27:1 is a really complicated verse to consider here. It could be using multiple idioms for one thing, or describing three different things, two Leviathans and a Dragon, or two things, Leviathan and a Dragon. This verse probably isn't about the actual animal anyway, but I still wanted to point that out.
If we limit our clues for the real animal to Job 41 does that weaken it's aquatic association? Not quite, verse 31 seems to say it spends some time in the sea. But it is most likely Amphibious and not purely a Sea Creature.
I have a personal hunch that the Leviathan of Job 41 could be Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. There are plenty of inaccuracies to how this Dinosaur was depicted in Jurassic Park 3, but according to this video it was indeed Amphibious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STn0CxdMIKk&t
Fire breathing, that is the big factor in objections to saying Dragons are real, including specifically Biblical ones which definitely attribute fire breathing to Leviathan and possibly but more debatably the Seraphim (there are other views of what them being called "firey" means).
The Bombardier beetle has an ability that certainly seems like shooting fire.
Skeptical analysis of such arguments for fire breathing animals often miss the point. Creationists only need the specific Biblical references to be literally true, so it doesn't matter if it actually looked like what Smaug or a Fire Type Pokemon can do.
One anti-Creationist website I was reading gave a simplified summery of the history of dragon legends and claims dragons didn't start breathing fire till the 5th century AD and none had wings till the 13th. That ignores The Bible's own descriptions of both winged serpents and Leviathan, as well as Beowulf. Basically this site wants to say Dragons didn't start resembling Dinosaurs till the 19th Century, which is an utterly absurd suggestion.
Monday, October 1, 2018
This is a Post about Higurashi/When They Cry
The very nature of what I want to discuss here is a spoiler. Higurashi is one of the few shows where I think it’s important to not be spoiled. As I already explained when I declared season 1 the ideal Horror Anime.
This post will even spoil season 2. In fact it's more so about season 2. Though some important hints at the themes I'm discussing here are in season 1. October just started so it's as good a time as any to watch it.
This post will even spoil season 2. In fact it's more so about season 2. Though some important hints at the themes I'm discussing here are in season 1. October just started so it's as good a time as any to watch it.
Saturday, September 8, 2018
Endymion & Selene compared to Inanna & Tammuz
That Endymion is called both a Shepherd and a King for awhile had me thinking David is the only other "mythological" figure he could viably be compared to. And while that connection is still one I'm perusing. I eventually remembered that on the Sumerian Kings List the Antedeluvian Dumuzi/Dumuzid (from which the name Tammuz comes) was called a Shepherd.
En is a Sumerian honorary prefix usually translated "lord". Also an -on often winds up added at the end of Greek transliterations of foreign names (this Greek feature is the only reason we call Babylon that, in the Hebrew/Aramaic text of the Old Testament it's always Babel/BBL, it's also traditionally viewed as why we spell Solomon that way). For those two reasons, I could see Lord Dumuzi being corrupted to Endymion in Greek. Also Damu is another form the name of Dumuzi used in a text titled In the Desert by the Early Grass.
The genealogy of Inanna/Ishtar is contradictory in various Sumerian/Akkadian and other Mesopotamian sources. Sometimes she's the daughter of Anu directly, sometimes of Enlil, rarely of Enki. But in one of the oldest Sumerian poems about her relationship with Dumuzid called Inana and Bilulu: an Ulila to Inana she is specifically depicted as the daughter of Nanna aka Suen/Sin (The Moon god) and his wife Ningal. Which gives a pretty strong basis for seeing her as a Lunar Goddess.
So basically, Inanna=Selene and Dumuzid/Tammuz=Endymion.
This is not the only Greek version of this Sumerian myth, as it's usually more commonly compared to Adonis, the Adonia happens the same time of year the Women wept for Tammuz. But remember Greece also had multiple Flood legends. In the Adonis tradition Inanna is Aphrodite, so that's the version that came through Cyrpus and Kythira. I also believe Eos and other Indo-European Dawn Goddess (plus Uzume in Japan) are also an aspect of Inanna/Ishtar.
What's interesting is how I could stretch this analogy beyond just the original Greek Myth and make it match even more by comparing it to the Lore of the Manga/Anime franchise Sailor Moon, starting with Ningal as Queen Serenity.
Bilulu could be compared to either Beryl or Queen Metaria. Metaria could also perhaps be compared to Ereshkigal, though that basically becomes a female version of the turning Hades into Satan trope.
The loyal Maid-Servants of Inanna like Ninshubur could perhaps be the other Sailor Senshi in this analogy, and I'm oddly attracted to Makoto as Geshtinanna. It's also theorized by some that Inanna and Ishtar were originally separate deities later merged together with Ishtar being originally mainly a name for the Planet Venus, so that makes Ishtar as Sailor Venus an interesting option since Sailor Venus was sometimes a body double for the Princess.
The four Shitennou could perhaps be compared to people like Lulal and Shara who were governing other cities under the sway of Uruk. Also Ningishzida who was a brother in-law of Dumuzi and sometimes paired with him.
I simply lack a Sailor Moon character to compare Girgire/Jirgire to, besides that maybe in a different way he also plays the role of the Shitennou.
En is a Sumerian honorary prefix usually translated "lord". Also an -on often winds up added at the end of Greek transliterations of foreign names (this Greek feature is the only reason we call Babylon that, in the Hebrew/Aramaic text of the Old Testament it's always Babel/BBL, it's also traditionally viewed as why we spell Solomon that way). For those two reasons, I could see Lord Dumuzi being corrupted to Endymion in Greek. Also Damu is another form the name of Dumuzi used in a text titled In the Desert by the Early Grass.
The genealogy of Inanna/Ishtar is contradictory in various Sumerian/Akkadian and other Mesopotamian sources. Sometimes she's the daughter of Anu directly, sometimes of Enlil, rarely of Enki. But in one of the oldest Sumerian poems about her relationship with Dumuzid called Inana and Bilulu: an Ulila to Inana she is specifically depicted as the daughter of Nanna aka Suen/Sin (The Moon god) and his wife Ningal. Which gives a pretty strong basis for seeing her as a Lunar Goddess.
So basically, Inanna=Selene and Dumuzid/Tammuz=Endymion.
This is not the only Greek version of this Sumerian myth, as it's usually more commonly compared to Adonis, the Adonia happens the same time of year the Women wept for Tammuz. But remember Greece also had multiple Flood legends. In the Adonis tradition Inanna is Aphrodite, so that's the version that came through Cyrpus and Kythira. I also believe Eos and other Indo-European Dawn Goddess (plus Uzume in Japan) are also an aspect of Inanna/Ishtar.
What's interesting is how I could stretch this analogy beyond just the original Greek Myth and make it match even more by comparing it to the Lore of the Manga/Anime franchise Sailor Moon, starting with Ningal as Queen Serenity.
Bilulu could be compared to either Beryl or Queen Metaria. Metaria could also perhaps be compared to Ereshkigal, though that basically becomes a female version of the turning Hades into Satan trope.
The loyal Maid-Servants of Inanna like Ninshubur could perhaps be the other Sailor Senshi in this analogy, and I'm oddly attracted to Makoto as Geshtinanna. It's also theorized by some that Inanna and Ishtar were originally separate deities later merged together with Ishtar being originally mainly a name for the Planet Venus, so that makes Ishtar as Sailor Venus an interesting option since Sailor Venus was sometimes a body double for the Princess.
The four Shitennou could perhaps be compared to people like Lulal and Shara who were governing other cities under the sway of Uruk. Also Ningishzida who was a brother in-law of Dumuzi and sometimes paired with him.
I simply lack a Sailor Moon character to compare Girgire/Jirgire to, besides that maybe in a different way he also plays the role of the Shitennou.
Thursday, August 2, 2018
Richard Carrier says the differences don't matter.
I've read a couple articles on Richard Carrier's website about the Christ Myth Hypothesis. And he basically stubbornly says that the differences like what InspiringPhilosphy and Chris White point out don't matter, it's only the similarities that matter.
[Update August 17th 2018: I need to add a major qualifier to my endorsement of Inspiring Philosophy's Copycat Savior playlist since in the new Inanna video he engages in the massive Hersey of denying The Harrowing of Hell.]
Well it's nice that you feel you get to write the rules of this debate in a way that inherently favors your side. But if you took George Lucas to court for plagiarizing The Hidden Fortress in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and said "all these differences don't matter" the Judge would laugh at you. "No one is claiming Star Wars is a true story" you might respond, well things that actually happen sometimes seem like history repeating itself, there were a lot of jokes back in the 2000s about a second George Bush starting a second war with Iraq. And sometimes things that actually happen seem like earlier fiction coming true, which is a recurring meme about our current President, fictional Donald Trumps got into the White House long before the real one did, and in most cases those writers thought they were writing an inherently impossible absurdity. Or I could leave politics out of this and point to The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility.
Christianity has never claimed to base it's credibility on saying no one had ever thought of the idea of coming back from the dead before. Quite the contrary I seek to show that the idea was firmly set up by the Hebrew Bible, including The Torah, in Genesis 22 and Joseph's narrative, and some of the Psalms. And everything that's a basis for the Messiah Ben-Joseph tradition. And the general Resurrection of the Dead was foretold in Isaiah 26, Ezekiel 37 and Daniel 12.
Richard Carrier is unique, he brings up his beliefs about the Old Testament not being much different from Pagan beliefs either in the same articles he talks about the Christ Myth Hypothesis. You see lots of Christ Mythers are doing this partly with an agenda of denying the Jewishness of the New Testament, of saying it uses the situation of First Century Judea as a setting but that it's fundamentally philosophically Greco-Roman. And that attitude is what I'm trying to oppose in posts like Greek words that are viewed as Gnostic and The Hebrew precedent for the Last Supper.
For example, people who see Virgin Births in every ancient Pre-Christian special birth story BUT Isaiah 7:14. Saying "Isaiah couldn't possibly have been talking about a Virgin Birth because his said Almah not Bethulah", and then turn around and read Virgin Births into Greek stories that never called anyone a Parthenos and do graphically describe sexual intercourse.
One website I read went on about how "Goddesses aren't like Humans, we can assume they remain Virgins even when they have sex", as if the "Hyman" was the point. Only three Olympian deities are called Virgin as a title and none of them reproduced, likewise with the non Olympian Astraea. And in the Ugarit texts only Anath is called any word for Virgin and she never reproduced either, one line in the Baal Cycle can be taken out of context about her "Bearing a calf" but that was about her carrying one in her arms not giving birth. The Egyptian Virgin Goddess was Nephthys, who Wikipedia says was the mother of Anubis but there is no actual solid source on that. Isis was never ever called a Virgin until post Enlightenment Thesophists and Neo-Pagans decided it suited them to do so.
If the Christ Mythers stated this part of their argument as just being that there were miraculous births before Jesus, it wouldn't be so easy to nit pick it to death. But they don't do that, the names of their articles and blog posts are always about Virgin births. But you see they know deep down only calling it a "Virgin" birth is specific enough to be an impressive similarity.
However I'm not as invested in the uniqueness of the Virgin Birth as I am the Resurrection, because the Virgin Birth isn't the definition of The Gospel, The Resurrection is. And that is where I'll firmly respond to Carrier's attitude by saying that to me the similarities don't matter, because the difference between Jesus Resurrection and pagan Dying and Rising god myths is where the definition of The Gospel lies.
Pagan dying and rising god myths are mere allegories for the "Circle of Life", meant to reinforce that Death is a natural part of how the world works that we need to accept. Which is also the Moral of the Epic of Gilgamesh. You see these Pagan "dying and rising gods" don't permanently rise, Osiris winds up right back down in the Underworld after being reanimated just long enough to conceive Horus. After the Sermon on Mars Hill in Acts 17 the Greek audience is baffled by Paul's declaration of The Resurrection, not because the author of Acts was unaware of Greeks myths that could be called dying and rising myths, but because Paul is referring to someone who stayed Risen.
The Harrowing of Hell doctrine gets compared to Orpheus traveling to Hades, but Orpheus failed, like Izanagi failed, however Jesus succeeded in getting His Bride out of Hades. The stories of Orpheus and Izanagi are the Bad News, they send the message that there is no escape from Hades/Yomi. Paul proclaimed in 1 Corinthians 15:55 that Death has no Sting and Hades has no Victory. Revelation chapter 20 foretells that Hades will one day be emptied. And in my interpretation of Scripture it's not merely some Humans who will be risen to Eternal Life, it is all of us, because I believe in Universal Salvation.
[Update August 17th 2018: I need to add a major qualifier to my endorsement of Inspiring Philosophy's Copycat Savior playlist since in the new Inanna video he engages in the massive Hersey of denying The Harrowing of Hell.]
Well it's nice that you feel you get to write the rules of this debate in a way that inherently favors your side. But if you took George Lucas to court for plagiarizing The Hidden Fortress in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and said "all these differences don't matter" the Judge would laugh at you. "No one is claiming Star Wars is a true story" you might respond, well things that actually happen sometimes seem like history repeating itself, there were a lot of jokes back in the 2000s about a second George Bush starting a second war with Iraq. And sometimes things that actually happen seem like earlier fiction coming true, which is a recurring meme about our current President, fictional Donald Trumps got into the White House long before the real one did, and in most cases those writers thought they were writing an inherently impossible absurdity. Or I could leave politics out of this and point to The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility.
Christianity has never claimed to base it's credibility on saying no one had ever thought of the idea of coming back from the dead before. Quite the contrary I seek to show that the idea was firmly set up by the Hebrew Bible, including The Torah, in Genesis 22 and Joseph's narrative, and some of the Psalms. And everything that's a basis for the Messiah Ben-Joseph tradition. And the general Resurrection of the Dead was foretold in Isaiah 26, Ezekiel 37 and Daniel 12.
Richard Carrier is unique, he brings up his beliefs about the Old Testament not being much different from Pagan beliefs either in the same articles he talks about the Christ Myth Hypothesis. You see lots of Christ Mythers are doing this partly with an agenda of denying the Jewishness of the New Testament, of saying it uses the situation of First Century Judea as a setting but that it's fundamentally philosophically Greco-Roman. And that attitude is what I'm trying to oppose in posts like Greek words that are viewed as Gnostic and The Hebrew precedent for the Last Supper.
For example, people who see Virgin Births in every ancient Pre-Christian special birth story BUT Isaiah 7:14. Saying "Isaiah couldn't possibly have been talking about a Virgin Birth because his said Almah not Bethulah", and then turn around and read Virgin Births into Greek stories that never called anyone a Parthenos and do graphically describe sexual intercourse.
One website I read went on about how "Goddesses aren't like Humans, we can assume they remain Virgins even when they have sex", as if the "Hyman" was the point. Only three Olympian deities are called Virgin as a title and none of them reproduced, likewise with the non Olympian Astraea. And in the Ugarit texts only Anath is called any word for Virgin and she never reproduced either, one line in the Baal Cycle can be taken out of context about her "Bearing a calf" but that was about her carrying one in her arms not giving birth. The Egyptian Virgin Goddess was Nephthys, who Wikipedia says was the mother of Anubis but there is no actual solid source on that. Isis was never ever called a Virgin until post Enlightenment Thesophists and Neo-Pagans decided it suited them to do so.
If the Christ Mythers stated this part of their argument as just being that there were miraculous births before Jesus, it wouldn't be so easy to nit pick it to death. But they don't do that, the names of their articles and blog posts are always about Virgin births. But you see they know deep down only calling it a "Virgin" birth is specific enough to be an impressive similarity.
However I'm not as invested in the uniqueness of the Virgin Birth as I am the Resurrection, because the Virgin Birth isn't the definition of The Gospel, The Resurrection is. And that is where I'll firmly respond to Carrier's attitude by saying that to me the similarities don't matter, because the difference between Jesus Resurrection and pagan Dying and Rising god myths is where the definition of The Gospel lies.
Pagan dying and rising god myths are mere allegories for the "Circle of Life", meant to reinforce that Death is a natural part of how the world works that we need to accept. Which is also the Moral of the Epic of Gilgamesh. You see these Pagan "dying and rising gods" don't permanently rise, Osiris winds up right back down in the Underworld after being reanimated just long enough to conceive Horus. After the Sermon on Mars Hill in Acts 17 the Greek audience is baffled by Paul's declaration of The Resurrection, not because the author of Acts was unaware of Greeks myths that could be called dying and rising myths, but because Paul is referring to someone who stayed Risen.
The Harrowing of Hell doctrine gets compared to Orpheus traveling to Hades, but Orpheus failed, like Izanagi failed, however Jesus succeeded in getting His Bride out of Hades. The stories of Orpheus and Izanagi are the Bad News, they send the message that there is no escape from Hades/Yomi. Paul proclaimed in 1 Corinthians 15:55 that Death has no Sting and Hades has no Victory. Revelation chapter 20 foretells that Hades will one day be emptied. And in my interpretation of Scripture it's not merely some Humans who will be risen to Eternal Life, it is all of us, because I believe in Universal Salvation.
Monday, April 30, 2018
Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Faust
It is pretty well known that Madoka drew on Faust, but typically analysis of Madoka has been more about how it relates to the Magical Girl genre and Anime trends in general. However there are some things about how Madoka uses Faust that I think are worth discussing. This is based on just the original stand alone series, I’m ignoring all the spin off Manga and Rebellion.
But first allow me to give a brief overview of the history of the Faust legend. Before the name of Faust appears.similar themes are seen in the stories about St Cyprian and Justina or Theophilus of Adana. (And sometimes comparisons to Simon Magus are made. ) The legend of Faust first emerged in Germany in the 1500s. Possibly partly inspired by the historical Alchemist Johann Georg Faust who lived about 1480-1540.
One of the first major dramatizations of the story was the English Language Elizabethan Stage Play written by Christopher Marlowe which has two contradictory versions. I watched a performance of it on YouTube. It might have been intended to be a commentary on Calvinism, since the key differences between the two versions come down to whether Faust had Free Will or not. This is one of the versions where there is no Salvation for Faust in the end.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s version of the story is clearly the primary influence on Madoka. For example Walpurgisnacht is a plot point in Goethe.
Then came George Reynolds' Penny Dreadful Faust saga which competed with Varney The Vampire, and then had a spin off called Wagner the Werewolf. And a famous puppet show. The perhaps most obscure treatment of the legend is in the first chapter of Paul Feval's La Vampire translated into English by Brian Stableford for BlackCoatPress as The Vampire Countess. But as a fan of theirs I feel compelled to mention it.
Not all of Madoka’s characters line up to characters in Faust even vaguely. There are three that to some extent do.
Kyubey is obviously Mephistopheles, that’s a no brainer.
Faust in this story is not the title character. All the other Magical Girls are to an extent, but chiefly it's Akemi Homura who is Faust.
The role Kaname Madoka fills is given away by the name of her Witch form, Gretchen. The character named Gretchen in Goethe's Faust is also known as Margurite or Margret. It’s possible to see Madoka as the closest thing to a similar sounding Japanese name.
The legend of Faust usually goes that he makes a deal with Mephistopheles selling his soul. They spend time being popular celebrities in Europe using their Magical Powers. Faust falls in love with Gretchen but Gretchen suffers a tragic fate because of Mephistopheles. Faust goes on being unrepentant. Many versions however have Faust saved in the end in-spite of his lack of Repentance, giving the story a Universalist tone.
Here is the thing about Goethe’s Faust that I feel is sadly overlooked in the context of its relationship to Madoka.
Faust is saved at the end when Gretchen who has become an Angel takes his Soul to Heaven snatching him away from The Devil. Yes, that’s right, even the Apotheosis of Madoka has a basis in Goethe.
Now Madoka has more agency then Gretchen in her Apotheosis, since Gretchen is just made an Angel as a reward for being Virtuous. But it’s somewhat subversive that Goethe considers Gretchen virtuous since she basically had an Abortion.
This aspect of the story descends from Theophilus being saved by the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary connection is also echoed by Ava Maria being played on the violin in the last episode of Madoka. I’ve commented elsewhere on how I think Fantasia may have also been an influence, Knight on Bald Mountain is depicting Walpurgisnacht.
"Virgin, Mother, Queen, ... Goddess kind forever... Eternal Womanhood. The Goddess is thus victorious over Mephistopheles, who had insisted at Faust's death that he would be consigned to "The Eternal Empty."- Goethe, Faust, Part Two, lines 12101–12110, translation: David Luke, Oxford World Classics.
That quote has the ability to seem both Feminist and Patriarchal in the same way that has made Feminists feel conflicted towards the Magical Girl Warrior genre since back when it was just Sailor Moon. So perhaps Faust was a more logical choice for a commentary on the Magical Girl genre than anyone originally thought.
But first allow me to give a brief overview of the history of the Faust legend. Before the name of Faust appears.similar themes are seen in the stories about St Cyprian and Justina or Theophilus of Adana. (And sometimes comparisons to Simon Magus are made. ) The legend of Faust first emerged in Germany in the 1500s. Possibly partly inspired by the historical Alchemist Johann Georg Faust who lived about 1480-1540.
One of the first major dramatizations of the story was the English Language Elizabethan Stage Play written by Christopher Marlowe which has two contradictory versions. I watched a performance of it on YouTube. It might have been intended to be a commentary on Calvinism, since the key differences between the two versions come down to whether Faust had Free Will or not. This is one of the versions where there is no Salvation for Faust in the end.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s version of the story is clearly the primary influence on Madoka. For example Walpurgisnacht is a plot point in Goethe.
Then came George Reynolds' Penny Dreadful Faust saga which competed with Varney The Vampire, and then had a spin off called Wagner the Werewolf. And a famous puppet show. The perhaps most obscure treatment of the legend is in the first chapter of Paul Feval's La Vampire translated into English by Brian Stableford for BlackCoatPress as The Vampire Countess. But as a fan of theirs I feel compelled to mention it.
Not all of Madoka’s characters line up to characters in Faust even vaguely. There are three that to some extent do.
Kyubey is obviously Mephistopheles, that’s a no brainer.
Faust in this story is not the title character. All the other Magical Girls are to an extent, but chiefly it's Akemi Homura who is Faust.
The role Kaname Madoka fills is given away by the name of her Witch form, Gretchen. The character named Gretchen in Goethe's Faust is also known as Margurite or Margret. It’s possible to see Madoka as the closest thing to a similar sounding Japanese name.
The legend of Faust usually goes that he makes a deal with Mephistopheles selling his soul. They spend time being popular celebrities in Europe using their Magical Powers. Faust falls in love with Gretchen but Gretchen suffers a tragic fate because of Mephistopheles. Faust goes on being unrepentant. Many versions however have Faust saved in the end in-spite of his lack of Repentance, giving the story a Universalist tone.
Here is the thing about Goethe’s Faust that I feel is sadly overlooked in the context of its relationship to Madoka.
Faust is saved at the end when Gretchen who has become an Angel takes his Soul to Heaven snatching him away from The Devil. Yes, that’s right, even the Apotheosis of Madoka has a basis in Goethe.
Now Madoka has more agency then Gretchen in her Apotheosis, since Gretchen is just made an Angel as a reward for being Virtuous. But it’s somewhat subversive that Goethe considers Gretchen virtuous since she basically had an Abortion.
This aspect of the story descends from Theophilus being saved by the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary connection is also echoed by Ava Maria being played on the violin in the last episode of Madoka. I’ve commented elsewhere on how I think Fantasia may have also been an influence, Knight on Bald Mountain is depicting Walpurgisnacht.
"Virgin, Mother, Queen, ... Goddess kind forever... Eternal Womanhood. The Goddess is thus victorious over Mephistopheles, who had insisted at Faust's death that he would be consigned to "The Eternal Empty."- Goethe, Faust, Part Two, lines 12101–12110, translation: David Luke, Oxford World Classics.
That quote has the ability to seem both Feminist and Patriarchal in the same way that has made Feminists feel conflicted towards the Magical Girl Warrior genre since back when it was just Sailor Moon. So perhaps Faust was a more logical choice for a commentary on the Magical Girl genre than anyone originally thought.
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