nuh uh!
>>> tina_carson@hotmail.com 08/06/03 11:42AM >>>
Jim,
You're obviously on the ropes and sucking air. Very weak arguments. My
responses below:
>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?
Not really, Jim. You see, hmmm.... All right, how's this for an analogy?
Suppose you and I started our own religion today, here in America. If we
chose the cross as our symbol, is it possible to come up with that and not
have any connection to reference to Christianity? Not bloody likely. If we
put a line across the top & bottom like a capital I with a crossing line
through the middle, then maybe. Likewise, if they had simply closed the
tail with a straight line down the back, or if the fish were facing the
other way, or... But no, it IS the gnostic symbol.
>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.
>
Huh? Don't get your point here. The gender of the deity means relatively
little if you're talking about religious comparisons.
>>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
>>reserved 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 Gnosticism 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?
>
This was, as I stated earlier, only one example. I didn't want to drag out
every example as I didn't want to write a textbook. There are many
examples, especially in the Nag Hammadi scrolls, of Jesus and his followers
as being gnostic. I mention the Nag Hammadi scrolls because in several
instances they have an expanded versions of passages in the 4 canonical
gospels that show the gnostic origin of these passages. I was, as stated,
only concentrating on the fish symbology.
>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 Eastern
>and Western segment, making the exercise of a single authority over the
>entire Mediterranean region impossible.
>
I never said that they were edited in the same way, only that if they were
aware of the gnosticism included they would have. A nasty speculation on my
part.
>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
Name calling is not an argument. Just because you don't agree with my point
doesn't mean my sources are any less scholarly than yours. Do you have
sources, by the way? You've not really made a point on your own, only
refuted mine by saying "that's not true". It is possible for 2 highly
qualified scholars to disagree, you know.
tina
_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
Received on Wed Aug 6 14:47:34 2003
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Thu Oct 16 2003 - 00:28:14 EDT