Posted on 06/19/2007 2:11:54 PM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu
And then there's Darfur.....
I didn't say the Bible hadn't been affected. I just remain comfortable that the influences in the Bible are according to the master plan.
There are plenty of peer-reviewed texts approaching the topic nowadays (One below). The jury is still out on the extent of the influences but they are clearly there - only the degree remains to be determined. Does it weaken my belief? No.
The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)By Mark S. Smith, Skirball Professor of Bible and Near Eastern Studies, New York University
As a result of comparing biblical and inscriptional evidence with the Ugaritic texts, we can see how the worship of other deities lasted for quite a long time in Israel's pantheon.
Almost every Native American society that we have any knowledge of had a pantheon of Gods before contact with Europeans. The fewest number of Major Gods in any known tribe were Two, one representing the male and the other the female aspect. The idea of the singular Great spirit was an outgrowth of contact with European Christians and is not a tradition that extends to a time before contact. Of course the idea of the singular great spirit is now over 500 years old and so many native americans believe that this is a static tradition that predates European contact....it doesn’t. I am 1/8 Cherokee (My grandmother is on the rolls) I am also an archaeologist with extensive work in Southeastern native cultures. I can wax philosophic about the native culture all I want but lets not pretend that this great spirit is the same as the Christian God.
The Jews borrowed the tradition of a single god from the Zorastrians. You may not belive this I don’t really care the evidence is in the archaeological record. Look it up.
You bring up a good point about Mithra. The Catholic Church is set up exactly like a Mithraic one with the exception that the Churches are above ground and women are allowed inside. Paul himself was almost 100% certain to have been a worshipper of Mithra because of his father and he was the first to add Mithraic concepts to Christianity. One fact that many people may not know is that Mithraic priests were not allowed to marry and all the oldest Churches in Europe including the Vatican are built directly on top of Mithra cave temples.
More here: http://www.thestormshelter.net/islaminfo.html
Allah- the god of Islam. Truthfully, Allah was the name of a moon god idol which Muhammad found in the Kaaba in Mecca. Out of the 360 idols in the Kaaba, Muhammad chose the Allah idol because it was the idol belonging to his powerful Quraysh tribe. The cresent moon is found everywhere in Islam: on the Islamic flag, on the chest of the Allah idol, and even the Islamic “holy days”, Ramadan, begins and ends with the cresent moon phases.
The inception of Judaism was far down the line from Abraham.
They were called Israelites, as decedents of Israel. Judah was one of the twelve sons of Jacob. There are another 11 tribes. Moses was not a Jew. He is of the tribe of Levi, another son.
The first time the word Jews or Jewish appear in the bible is in the book of Esther. That is far into the story of Man and the story of the Hebrews or Israelites.
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I thought Paul was of Pharisee stock? I just read the excellent In Search of Paul bio, and didn’t see anything about him and Mithras...can you share any links with this info?
Anyone of European decent are decendants of idolators. Celts, pre-Christian Romans, you name it.
It was perhaps about 10 or 12 years ago that the NY Times ran an article on an archeologic dig from Israel where it was found that Jewish families still kept idols of the old semitic Gods in their households. This dated to about 600 BC...
Or Africans
I doubt I'd argue with your understanding of the origins of most citizens of the US. The major Christian continents are Europe, N.America, S.America, and the number of Christians in Africa & Asia is rapidly rising.
Paul’s Father was a Roman citizen from the city of Tarsus and his mother was a Jew. Tarsus at the time of Paul was the center of mithra worship in the Roman empire. There is no direct evidence of Paul’s father’s religion but as Mithra was the common religion of Romans in the provinces it is more than a good chance his father was an adherant and there is no chance that Paul a Roman citizen who grew up in Tarsus was not exposed to the religion which was as prevelant there as Christianity is today in America.
Imagine Paul’s surprise when he began to learn that his mother’s people had a messiah who matched the messiah of the faith of his father’s people.
mithra had 12 disciples
died to save mankind
born of a virgin in a cave
shepards heralded his birth
Son of the one true God
walked the earth doing miracles
tempted by the satan of the Mithra faith
All this had been fully estabilished in the Mithra Faith 60 years before the birth of Christ.
I can’t even imagine what Paul thought but I think it all came together on the road to damascus for him.
I might argue Africa either way because it is currently in flux with Islam becoming the dominate religion over the remanants of Christianity left after the pull out of the colonial governments.
Tell me the name of your tribe and I’ll find out for you. Of course if it is a tribe that was not studied at contact I doubt there is anyway anyone can discover what the Gods were that your people worshipped pre-contact.
There is no evidence for Paul’s father, or his father’s religion. Anybody can speculate anything. Don’t mistake goofy speculation for history.
Speculation based on fact is all we have about Paul’s early life and reams of books and articles have been written on the subject. Also there can be absolutely no doubt he was exposed to the Mithra faith before he was exposed to Christianity unless Paul grew up in a vacuum which he didn’t. In fact alot of what Paul taught is not Christianity at all but Mithraism. Paul’s notable disdain for women in the church is certainly not part of Christ’s teaching but is a central part of Mithriasm.
sources?
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