Re: The Gospels

Responses below:

tina carson wrote:

> Ok,
> to avoid my earlier mistake of arguing the complete gospels at once,
> let me take this one point at a time, specifically the fish
> symbology. Yes, in the first century, (perhaps even in Jesus'
> lifetime, but there's no proof of that) Christian were using the
> symbol of the fish to identify themselves. The 2 reference points
> that I have for Jesus being a gnostic are the following:
> 1) If you look at the symbol, it is a downward arc intersecting an
> upward arc. This represents a pythagorean ratio for the area of two
> identical circles intersecting to the point of the center of each
> circle. This was a gnostic symbol pre-Christian use, which the
> now-christian gnostics simply continued to use. Oh, in pre-christian
> gnostic use, God was often, if not usually a woman, and the word
> ichthys also means womb and dolphin, referring to mermaids, a
> reference to the sea goddess. It was, as womb, meant to be taken as
> the womb of Isis. Further, :

I won't argue with the information because I'm not, at present, ready to
do so. But you missed something very important in my previous post:

1. Suppose, for just the reasons given in my last post, Christians
wanted to adopt the Fish symbol. Is it possible to draw a simple icon
of a fish without using an ascending and descending arc? Are you
prepared to say that everyone throughout western history who has used
the fish as a symbol has been influenced by Pythagorean thought? In
other words, why isn't it possible for Christians to adopt a fish icon
without making any reference to Pythagorean symbolism? Suppose one
early Pythagorean Christian invented the symbol and everyone else just
happened to like it, without knowing its meaning to Pythagorean thought?

2. I think it you look at religions with paired male/female deities,
or religions with female deities, and compared them to Christianity
across the boards, you'd find they were so incompatible that this kind
of dependence is very unlikely.

> 2) In John 21, a story is told about Jesus telling the fishermen when
> & where to cats their nets. This is a recycled story previously told
> about Pythagoras. In the Pythagorean story, the number isn't
> mentioned, it's reserned for the inner circle. In John, the number is
> mentioned: 153, which is part of the aforementioned circle ratio.
> Just one of many tell-tale signs of gnostisism that slipped through,
> despite the Holy Roman Empire. No doubt, things would have been
> edited differently had they known how much gnostic material was still
> included.
> "hit me with your best shot" tina

Honestly, tina, if this is the best you can do you really have nothing
at all. Have you ever read Umberto Eco's _Foucault's Pendulum_?
Numbers can be made to mean anything -- it's very dangerous to go beyond
a very few basic numbers that obvious recur (7 and 3 and 12 are easy
ones in the NT. 153 is not).

Now, assuming this story was originally Pythagorean, since it only
occurs in one Gospel, how do you know this was evidence of widespread
Christian Gnosticism and not evidence of a later gnostic interpolation,
or evidence of gnostic influences on the author of that one Gospel, or
just sheer coincidence? All three equally explain the evidence we have
-- why do you choose one explanation above all others as true without
doubt?

Furthermore, this whole nonsense about the texts all being edited the
same way is simply impossible. There are literally thousands of copies
and fragments of the NT from Spain to the Middle East to the Northern
coast of Africa from antiquity, in addition to citations by the church
fathers. It's literally impossible for all of them to have been edited
the same way. There wasn't a monolithic religious authority governing
the entire region until well after the NT period, even this authority
didn't have the ability to account for every manuscript, and it
eventually divided into an Eatern and Western segment, making the
exercise of a single authority over the entire Mediterranean region
impossible.

This is all very well known history that your sources choose to ignore.
They're hacks telling you what you want to believe, Tina, but not
scholars.

Jim

-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
Received on Wed Aug 6 09:41:01 2003