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Post by Dragonmaster on Dec 23, 2009 17:43:25 GMT 1
Absolutely, cbc. Mankind has always celebrated the return of light at the winter solstice, the coming of new life and new growth in spring, harvest and other times. Pretty much all Christian celebrations are dated to co-incide with these more ancient festivals. There is evidence to suggest Jesus was born in summer, under the sign of Leo, (even though the church doesn't like astrology it was in common use back then). Easter moves because it is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, and that has something to do with an older festival in Judaism. When people were trying to convert the natives (and Pagan just means 'of the countryside') it was easier to keep to times they were used to having celebrations. There is an old tradition of The Sun God being reborn at the winter solstice, the Roman god Mithras had his birthday celebrated on 25th December and he was a sort of sun deity. Jesus' birth is a newer tradition tacked on to an older one. In the end it doesn't really matter when Jesus was born, just that He was born and what He did.
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Post by Catrin on Dec 23, 2009 18:01:30 GMT 1
Christian celebrations were sort of Piggy backed onto older religions celebration days were they not? Or is that just some stange thing my crusty brain has manufactured for itself You are indeed correct. The main Christian celebration was at Easter time, the festival of Isis originally, hence the derived name of Easter. Herodotus writes, in 440 BC, about the Mysteries celebrated at Easter around the Mediterranean and this continued until we got them up North. Christmas as the big do, started in the 4th century. Yuletide was what you got at the Solstice, but several of the Mystery Godmen had their birthdays round about then: Mithras, Attis, Dionysus, Serapis, Bacchus, Adonis on December 25; Osiris on January 6, same day as the Eastern Orthodox Christmas or The Epiphany. Saturn got in first around December 17–23. Roman Emperor Aurelian decided to go with the flow and made December 25 Saturn's birthday to match up with all the others. Freyr is the odd one out, he was the son of Odin, the Norse supreme god, his birthday too was December 25. He isn't, of course, one of the Mystery Religions' Dying and Resurrecting Godmen. The reason it was December 25th, not the Solstice itself, was because the Sun stays at its lowest point in the heavens for three days, before it starts to rise again. Hence the origins of the resurrection occuring three days after the death of the Godman too.
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Post by Catrin on Dec 23, 2009 18:27:13 GMT 1
…There is evidence to suggest Jesus was born in summer, under the sign of Leo, … Then he can share his birth with Lord Krishna whose birthday falls every year between August and September in the Hindu month of Sravana. How he died varies, the Bagaveda-Gita says that the body of Krishna "… was suspended to the branches of a tree by his murderer, that it might become the prey of the vultures…" but of course there are several refences in the Bible, particularly in the Acts, of Christ's body being "hung on a tree." Have never seen a date to see whether it was at Easter or around the vernal equinox. Which raises another interesting question about the origins of the Isis story!
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Post by geeup on Dec 24, 2009 9:21:19 GMT 1
bible stories are interesting in that they were verbal ones originally, take fairy tales for example, there are several variations on a theme, by the time they were written down variations had occurred. Same story though.
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Post by Dragonmaster on Dec 24, 2009 10:04:33 GMT 1
…There is evidence to suggest Jesus was born in summer, under the sign of Leo, … Then he can share his birth with Lord Krishna whose birthday falls every year between August and September in the Hindu month of Sravana. How he died varies, the Bagaveda-Gita says that the body of Krishna "… was suspended to the branches of a tree by his murderer, that it might become the prey of the vultures…" but of course there are several refences in the Bible, particularly in the Acts, of Christ's body being "hung on a tree." And a lot of Hindus believe that 'Krishna' and 'Christ' are one and the same. There is also a legend that Jesus went to India either during the 'missing years' of early adulthood, or after the crucifixion which was not a literal death but the end of his time of ministry; a symbolic death as with all the sacrificial godman myths. I don't wish to offend any Christians here - I'm not saying this is true, just what some believe and have written books about. This belief about Krishna/Christ is based on the idea that they are the same "Higher Spiritual Being" (I'm not sure of the correct term) who incarnated on earth several times to teach mankind. Jesus was the human body he was incarnated into 2000 years ago. The man may have gone but the spiritual being is still around, and available for us to communicate with.
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Post by geeup on Dec 24, 2009 16:34:21 GMT 1
it would be nice to think he'd incarnate back on Earth now with global warming threats and horrible wars, but could you imagine Jesus with a twitter page, or a mobile, it would be mob rule, bomb threats and the papperatsi (can't spell), would he be able to spread the word of God now?
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Post by cbc on Dec 24, 2009 16:57:15 GMT 1
bible stories are interesting in that they were verbal ones originally, take fairy tales for example, there are several variations on a theme, by the time they were written down variations had occurred. Same story though. There were several versions of the bible as it was translated into Latin if I remember correctly, the trees and flowers etc being "translated"into familiar ones too...so the illuminations painted on Medieval books of hours etc would be familiar.(eek! last time I did this stuff was 20 years ago ) Thanks for the brilliant answers Catrin Dragonmaster and geeup
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Post by Catrin on Dec 24, 2009 17:44:32 GMT 1
bible stories are interesting in that they were verbal ones originally, take fairy tales for example, there are several variations on a theme, by the time they were written down variations had occurred. Same story though. There were several versions of the bible as it was translated into Latin if I remember correctly, ... Over one hundred different versions recorded so far, in current use and in english, from the Abbreviated Bible of 1971 to Young's Literal Translation, Revised Edition 1898. The oldest probably is seven books of the Old Testament Septuagint c. 200 BCE. Then there are the translations! The Septuagint was first translated into Latin in the second century CE, followed by Greek translations of the Old and New Testament. No early versions of the Latin translations survive, so the earliest is probably Jerome's commisioned by Pope Damascus because there were so many versions around that the Pope didn't like. It wasn't an easy job and what we got was arbitrary as Jerome put in the note he handed over with the four Gospels: "Thou compellest me, to make a new work out of an old so that after so many copies of the Scriptures have been dispersed throughout the whole world I am as it were to occupy the post of arbiter, and seeing they differ from one another am to determine which of them are in agreement with the original Greek. If they maintain that confidence is to be reposed in the Latin exemplars, let them answer which, for there are almost as many copies of translations as manuscripts. But if the truth is to be sought from the majority, why not rather go back to the Greek original, and correct the blunders which have been made by incompetent translators, made worse rather than better by the presumption of unskillful correctors, and added to or altered by careless scribes?" So you pays your money and takes your choice which version takes your fancy. There's plenty out there.
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