Jarek or whoever you are: I’ve been accused of being all kinds of people I’m not on the web (even famous people who I was making fun of!) This happened even when I used my real name. Which frankly, is a terrible terrible idea. If you are not using a made-up name, I urge you to do so in future. But most of all, if you are actually sailing on the Aegean Sea, I urge you to forget this forum exists until after you are back on terra firma. Because seriously. Why would you even care? I was in the Catskills a few weeks back, and none of you existed for that period of time. 🙂
The goal of this thread is to discuss Creating Christ, not to express Narcissistic Personality Disorder attempts to isolate people. Take your mental illness (NPD or whatever else your problem is) somewhere else.
This thread is not about judging whether or not a natal chart and an Astro*Carto*Graphy map provides insight to personality or how one’s life unfolds.
So, pick up the book, read it, and bring your take-aways to the discussion.
Jarek started a valuable and important thread. I found it worthy of my time days after he started it. Friends of mine interviewed the authors. I then began engaging with this thread.
Attempts to belittle and isolate people who recognize the value of the Roman provenance of the gospels is a failure of argumentation: personal attacks win no respect among people who are competent in conversing with others and competent in analyzing arguments and making final judgments on whether or not a case or resolution is successful.
James S. Valliant & Warren Fahy
The Coin Is the Evidence.
The coin was issued in the millions by the Flavian Emperor Titus who conquered Jerusalem and sacked the Temple as Jesus had prophesied.
The symbol the coin bears is a dolphin wrapped around an anchor. This symbol Christians used to symbolize Christ for the first three centuries BEFORE Emperor Constantine replaced it with the symbol of the cross. On the other side of the coin is the profile of Emperor Titus.
Part I: Dolphin and Anchor, Chapter 1: Crux Dissimulata
= = =
Steefen
Well, I and everyone else reading the book or discussing the book will need to know about the dolphin wrapped around an anchor symbol. There were no dolphins in the river Jordan or the Sea of Galilee, I and a whole lot of other people would surmise.
I wonder if Bart is aware of the claim that the Dolphin and Anchor was a Christian symbol. I’ll ask him.
Coins were producent for very short period by Titus and Domintian. Anchor and Dolphin is the oldest graval image from Christians catacombs in Rome dated for second century. We have rings from 3rd century. This symbol is dominant in our findings for first three centuries. The next is ichthys, chi-rho, cross.
“How could Christians represent themselves with any symbol stamped on the coins of a Roman emperor while those coins were still circulating throughout Rome? How is it possible that the first symbol they chose to represent Jesus Christ was used by a Roman emperor—the very emperor who fulfilled Jesus’s prophecy by destroying the Jewish Temple and who proclaimed himself to be the Jewish Messiah? ” (from “Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity” by James S. Valliant, C. W. Fahy)
“The first historical naming of the fish as an official visual symbol of Christianity is by St. Clement of Alexandria (whose full name was Titus Flavius Clemens, c. 150-215 CE). In his work, Christ, the Instructor, St. Clement advises Christians to use a dove or a fish or an anchor among other symbols as their identifying “seal”: And let our seals be either a dove, or a fish, or a ship scudding before the wind, or a musical lyre, which Polycrates used, or a ship’s anchor, which Seleucus got engraved as a device; and if there be one fishing, he will remember the apostle, and the children drawn out of the water. (21) It is interesting that the “Polycrates” mentioned by St. Clement here was a pagan tyrant of the Greek island of Samos who flourished around 530 BCE and who especially revered the god Apollo, to whom the lyre was sacred. This tyrant’s execution by the Persians (probably by being impaled or crucified) was foreseen in a prophetic dream by his daughter, who saw him “washed by Zeus [rained on] and anointed by Helios [sweated out under the sun].”” (from “Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity” by James S. Valliant, C. W. Fahy)
“First among the close relatives of the Flavian emperors we must take note of is Vespasian’s nephew and Titus’s cousin, a man named Titus Flavius Clemens. As we have already seen, his name was shared by the later Titus Flavius Clemens, the Christian father known today as St. Clement of Alexandria, who lived in the 3rd Century. The latter Clemens suggested that both anchors and dolphins be adopted as Christian symbols a century after the death of this possible ancestor. This earlier Titus Flavius Clemens, who lived during the imperial rule of his Flavian relatives, was known as St. Clement of Rome—one of the first popes. According to Church tradition, one of the first popes (either the third or fourth depending on the ancient list used) was the 1st Century “St. Clement of Rome.” However, Tertullian names him as the successor of St. Peter himself, and St. Jerome reports a tradition that Clement was the “second after the apostle” (Peter) himself. (1) Of course, there really was no such office as “pope” (Bishop of Rome) yet, although there already may well have been an elaborate Church hierarchy. Lists of the early Church’s actual leadership are the sketchiest of evidence since they are based on an orally transmitted tradition. The tradition that places this 1st Century pope as the second or third after Christ’s own appointed “rock,” Peter, can only be as certain as the authority of St. Jerome, who claimed Clement to have been the successor of the famous “fisherman” himself. However, Clement’s high place on these lists is astounding. How could such a close relative of the Flavian emperors be the second, third or fourth pope, or any such high ranking figure in the early Church?” (from “Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity” by James S. Valliant, C. W. Fahy)
Btw, everybody knows Kepler was a devout Christian whose ideas were strongly influenced by his faith in a rational creator, right? (Certainly had little reason to trust in the rationality of humans, since he had to defend his own devout mother from sorcery charges, for which she was tortured).
Interestingly, he tried to calculate the true birth date of Jesus, and concluded it was 5 BC. I seem to recall Bart has suggested that Jesus might have been older than is generally believed.
In conclusion, Kepler would not be impressed by some of the people here taking his name in vain. Not merely because your beliefs differ from his, but more because your thought patterns are so chaotic and disordered. He would find that distasteful. 🙂
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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