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To: vladimir998
But where's thr proof?

Is the fact that the image of the Crucifixion actually pre-dates the event proof for you?

Here's the image source

81 posted on 07/10/2006 8:59:18 AM PDT by kerryusama04 (Isa 8:20)
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To: kerryusama04
That image looked suspicious, so I did a little research on it. You might want to read this:
Now let us add in those unique items posited by Freke and Gandy. We should first note the most obvious, for it graces the cover of their work: Based on "a small picture tucked away in the appendices of an old academic book" (though what the cite is for this book, we are not told), they feature a drawing of "a third-century CE amulet" with a depiction of a crucified figure which names "Orpheus Bacchus" as the figure, another name for D. According to Freke and Gandy, this shows that "To the initiated, these were both names for essentially the same figure." [12-13] To which we reply: That's the initiated's problem. The uncritical syncretism of a single person (the maker/wearer of the amulet) provides no evidence for the copycat thesis; least of all when the evidence dates several hundred years after the time of Christ (as does indeed all their evidence of D being crucified [52]). They also state incorrectly that there are no representations of the crucified Jesus before the fifth century; as Raymond Brown noted in Death of the Messiah, there are about a half-dozen depictions of the crucified Jesus dated between the second and fifth century, and even if this were not so, the literary depiction in the Gospels amounts to the same thing. Freke and Gandy chose rather a poor examplar to feature on their cover.

Update: Poorer than we realized, in fact. Our old pal Venerable Bede has uncovered some new information on this picture used by F and G that really blows them out of the water. Bede has given me permission to use this from one of his online logs; we'll just report it here.

Freke and Gandy do not supply a reference for the picture in their book but kindly let me know by email. The first they supplied was R Eisler, Orpheus the Fisher (Kessinger Publishing reprints), first published in 1920 and where the fourth century date for the amulet is given and it is illustrated. Interestingly it is dated to the fourth century simply by virtue of its representation of a crucifixion so could, in theory be older or more recent.

The second reference was WKC Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion Princeton University Press, 1952. This is the second edition and discusses the amulet at some length on page 265. He mentions the views of Eisler and Otto Kern who was a very distinguished German expert on Orpheus. At the time, both considered the gem to be an ancient Orphic artifact and Eisler suggested their was a tradition of a crucified Orpheus. Pointing to the evidence of Justin Martyr, who denies there ever was a crucified pagan, Guthrie rightly rejects this interpretation.

...But there is a final kicker to this story that Freke failed to mention. I found an endnote to the 1952 edition of Guthrie's work (page 278) states:

"In his review of this book [Orpheus and Greek Religion] in Gnomon (1935, p 476), [Otto] Kern [unfeasibly esteemed German expert on Orpheus] recants and expresses himself convinced by the expert opinion of Reil and Zahn [more distinguished Germans] that the gem is a forgery."

I looked up the review in Gnomon but it is in German so I can't make anything of it. Still, the gem has been branded a forgery by noted experts. Luckily for Freke and Gandy that they don't think the gem important to their thesis, but you still have to ask what it was doing on the front cover of their book. And one can also have suspicions as to why they didn't give a reference to where the picture came from.

It may well be a forgery; but even if it's not, the authors of the book it came from seem to think it is of the 3rd century. Oh, and someone ought to let Stormfront in on the news...they have it up on their website.
84 posted on 07/10/2006 10:10:56 AM PDT by Claud
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To: kerryusama04

No. The image of a cross is ancient and pre-dates Christianity. Christ was crucified. That's why Christians use the symbol. The former has nothing to do with the latter. Also, the image you posted was not sourced was it? I went to the website you linked. Where is the source of the image?


85 posted on 07/10/2006 10:10:59 AM PDT by vladimir998 (Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. St. Jerome)
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