Re: The Gospels

Jim,
You seem to have misunderstood. Allow me to be more clear.
The fish that I was referring to is, specifically the story of the fisherman
with a poor catch, then Jesus tells them when to throw their nets in. This
is an old story of Pythagoras. Yes, though, there is ample evidence that
early Christians used the fish as a symbol, which itself is a pythagorean
formula for two circle merging. Jesus was a gnostic, his followers were
gnostics following the new gnostic leader, and this was widely accepted
until the Council of Nicea when Constantine and the Church were grasping for
power. Gnosticism would take the power out of the hands of the clergy, so
it had to be put down. The Church now glosses over this. They even
martyred Valentinus for being a gnostic, then made him a saint.
tina

>Responses below:
>
>tina carson wrote:
>
>>Second, Yes, The Jesus Mysteries DOES explain the origin of many of the
>>Christian mythos, ie the stories of virgin birth, born in a stable, died
>>on a cross, etc that apply to at LEAST two other religions that predate
>>Christianity and were practiced in the area, ie I'm not talking about
>>South American religions that the Jews would have had no knowledge of.
>
>I wonder how much of this was gleaned from Frazer...just curious.
>
>>Third, Yes, I am stating that some of the Nag Hammadi scrolls are more
>>accurate than the 4 canonical gospels. Specifically, I cite the fact that
>>the Council of Nicea and subsequent councils specifically denounced and
>>persecuted Gnostics. The Nag Hammadi scrolls were gnostic. Jesus was a
>>gnostic. The 4 canonical gospels disguise that fact, but many tell-tale
>>signs show through, ie the sign of the fish for Christianity, and the
>>story of throwing out the nets, Jesus tells them when. These are gnostic
>>derivatives specifically Pythagorean stories. I'll go into more detail on
>>them if you like.
>>tina
>
>The "Fish" symbol isn't really mentioned in the Gospel accounts and we
>don't know that it was ever used by Palestinian Christianity around
>Christ's time or immediately afterwards. The Greek word for fish,
>"icthus", was seen as an anagram for "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior" and
>then, of course, there's Christ telling the apostles he'd make them fishers
>of men. So while the symbol was meaningful to early Christians, I don't
>know how widely the Fish symbol was employed in the first century outside
>of Greece and Rome, and I don't think there's any evidence for it's use by
>the disciples while Christ was alive. While it may or may not be
>emblematic of gnostic influences on early Christianity, it doesn't tell us
>anything about Christ.
>
>Even beyond this, literary parallels don't establish dependence of one
>source upon another. I'm studying William Blake pretty intensely, and he's
>a virtual hodge-podge of literary allusion. Thing is, his poetry doesn't
>read like patchwork or seems derivative at all, even when you're familiar
>with the possible source material. The fact that he borrowed symbols
>doesn't mean he understood them the same way his sources understood them.
>
>Belief by association is a very weak form of argument and even weaker
>scholarship.
>
>Jim
>
>-
>* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
>* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH

_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail

-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
Received on Tue Aug 5 14:43:36 2003