History Forum / General / Archaeology / December 2006

news:1165781657.394652.87900@f1g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

I don't think it is easy to declare religion
an archaeological subject.

In sci.archaeology message  news:1165781657.394652.87900
@f1g2000cwa.googlegroups.com by "Carl" <pchristainsen@yahoo.com>  . . . :

I can't even begin to tie the work of this alleged Dr. barb, to
what I know and what has been discussed in this group. While
I don't take the position of some that christ did not exist,
the contradictions between the New Testiment and facts at the
time are troubling and these text without the use of gnostic
gospils and other text probably (certainly) are ripe with factual
errors. Jesus was said to be crucified in 31AD at an age of 33 to 35
years, but as we see authors are placing the birth date between 7BC to
1AD, in fact they can't even say what time of year jesus was born
in. If jesus was born during the reign of herod then we know exactly
that he was not born in AD. IN fact none of the gnostic gospils appear
to imbellish christ with miraculous births, deaths, or all-powerful
god-like qualities
 Secondarily I think the direction of the church suggests strongly
that gnosticism was more predominant in the beginning of the church,
if this is taken to be the case and if Jesus's place of birth was
a bethlehem of gallilee region, and given the story of the wise
men 'magi', clearly indicating a link to zoroastrianism that the
gnostics highly entertained.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magi

"
According to Herodotus i. 101, which lists the names of the six tribes or
castes of the Medes, the Magi were a hereditary caste of priests. They were
highly influential in Median society until the unification of the Median
and Persian Empires in 550 BC, after which their power was curtailed by
Cyrus the Great and by Cyrus' son Cambyses II. The Magi revolted against
Cambyses and set up a rival claimant to the throne, one of their own, who
took the name of Smerdis. Smerdis and his forces were defeated by the
Persians under Darius I. The Magi continued to exist in unified Persia, but
their influence was limited after this and other political setbacks, and it
was not until the Sassanid era (AD 226–650) that they would again achieve
prominence.
"

But as teachers of kings, etc continue to exhert influence when they could.

"
The Book of Jeremiah (39:3, 39:13) gives a title rab mag "chief magus" to
the head of the Magi, Nergal Sharezar (Septuagint, Vulgate and KJV
mistranslate Rabmag as a separate character). It's also believed by some
Christians that the Jewish prophet Daniel was "rab mag" and entrusted a
Messianic vision (to be announced in due time by a "star") to a secret sect
of the Magi for its eventual fulfillment (Daniel 4:9; 5: 11).
"
[I don't ascribe to this type of thinking, but it suggests some
persistent links between the sect and returnees from babylon]
see also: http://www.thedyinggod.com/chaldeanmagi/index.html
My two cents here is that apparent teachings appear to be influenced
by non-jewish scholars and aligned as best as possible with jewish
teachings. Not greek or roman as these are heavily influenced by
polytheism but zoroastrianism which denies secondary dieties and
puts a high threshold on prophets and vassals of dieties.
 Think about this, why would christians,
particularly the orthodox leaning writers of the 2nd century willingly
include references to the magi, the preist-class of a completely
different religion.    In addition there are similarities in the
beliefs of some of the core christian parables and the zoroastrian
belief, so I would not place this as evidence of a hellenistic link,
although some sources claim that the maggus of the region were
hellenized to certain degrees and were far removed from zoroastrianism.

Contrarily.
 The core conflict of christianity is the philosophical position of
east versus west, the herodic/roman position of might makes right
aligns itself with hellenism but, of course, the hellenistic being
much more intellectual. The persians reinstated judaism into palestine
for the sake of gaining more control, it must have been upsetting to
them when the greeks gained control in palestine and rule as the Seleucid
empire, with the reckless parade of Alexander the Great, the remnant was
short lived and both romans and persians carved up the remnants for
self-gain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Bactrian_Kingdom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthia

 In the east this period is  followed by the Parthian Empire, at its
greatest extent extended into Syria not far from NW palestine. The Magi,
teachers and scholars of kings were often sought out and hire in the west,
but of course the romans had little to do with them. Late Seleucid/early
parthian period the region was ripe with civil war, the big powers out
of the way, conflicts, not to alltogether different than what we are
seeing in Iraq, presently, erupted. Hellenism was a foriegn religion and
it began a rapid retreat to the east with some pockets (isolates)
remaining.
 During the time of christ the romans showed periods of agression
for example an attempt to invade Armenia as a pretense for attacking
the parthians, the parthians quickly sued for peace settling the conflict
and turning Armenia to the roman sphere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vonones_I_of_Parthia

"
After the assassination of Orodes III in about 6, the Parthians applied to
Augustus for a new King from the house of Arsaces. Augustus sent them
Vonones I, but he could not maintain himself as King; he had been educated
as a Roman, and was despised by the Parthian nobility as a slave of the
Romans. Another member of the Arsacid house, Artabanus II (ruled c. 10–38),
who was living among the Dahan nomads in the east of Parthia, was invited
to the throne. In a civil war he defeated and expelled Vonones I.
"

One can see that the Romans were making a mess of parthian politics,
the Queen Musa was an Italian Slave, was dethroned, followed by
two short-lived rulers and a civil war. Not that the romans were doing
much better with the leadership crisis. However, the Romans held several
parthian blood-lines as hostage in Rome, thwarting succession
creating civil wars at their liberty

This was followed by a period of probably greatest importance because
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artabanus_II_of_Parthia  both tried
to establish amicable relationships with the greeks and the jews living
outside of palestine. It was a period of a widening sphere of influence
at least diplomatically of the parthians and there beliefs. The parthian
empire grew slowly in influence to about 60AD and declined, gnosticism
particularly the eastern version suffered the same fate, declining
with parthians and eventually persistent in what is now Iran. The greeks
were out of the picture, and the christian church would grow under
a roman center and expanding largely to roman ports, which became
the center of orthodoxy and essentially the center of openly practiced
christianity. The apparent revisions of the new testiment reflect these
origins, and the gnostics underwent suppresion or simply left. Of
the number of independent churches that existed in the 2nd and 3rd century
only one principle church remained, and a semi-independent church
in Ethiopia (governed indirectly from alexandria) which was further
isolated when the gnostic and non-christian teachings were destroyed
in Alexandria.
 Some of the syrian christian churches maintained connection with
gnosticism and it is said that gnosticism influenced the origins
of islam and sufism, but by and large this element was pushed eastward
and to the extremes of the roman empire and disappeared by suppression
from the church in the west and by the growth of Islam in the east.
As they say history is generally written by the victors, not too much
is known about the history of the parthians, and much of what is known
is from Greek and Jewish historians.

  In most instances the parthians avoided direct military contact
with rome or the roman army, and instead sought to undermine the contested
territories using clandestine and diplomatic tactics. Herod the Great
was probably a thorn in the side of the persians since he was ambivalent
about the link between the Achaemenid Empire of the past in restoring
but sought to be a middle man between rome and its influences
and palestine.

 What is probable and improbable really depends on how much
one values different sources. I certainly don't know the answers
and based on what I have seen on public television, from a historical
scientific perspective, they clearly have no basis for their answers.
What is clear is the various parables spoken by Jesus within the synoptic
and gnostic gospils, those that can be aligned to the earliest period
are more interrogative in nature than some of the other 'quotations'.
These quotations clearly align early christian thought with gnosticism
and aspects of zoroastrianism versus judaism of the period, which may
explain the persecution of Jesus and his followers and the acceptance
they received outside of Palestine. It does appear that statements were
added later on that cannot be attributed by collaboration, and of course
the origin and resurrection stories look to have been embellishments
added later. The question arises is how much of what is attributed
to Jesus is actually something that could be of his mouth. By and large
we don't know. So instead of questioning whether the man lived, as
certain athiest do, one has to question how much he actually said
that is his teaching.
 The primary sources of the synoptic gospils appear to be an altered
version of Mark >50AD and second hand to Peter, written in latin, Paul
as a source of his own work and to Luke who proclaims clearly that
he is gathering stories of second hand accounts. Literally one cannot
rely on these for accuracies. Tomas is a smattering of, seem to me,
less doctored quotes and no discussion of origins, miracles, etc. There
is nothing per say other than the timing of his death that is historical
fact, an no way to align potential facts with history. Attempts to align
facts with history have only gone to show how late the gospils were
written.
  So basically we are reliant on an unknown but correct orientation of the
historical context, where was Jesus born and what were the influences
surrounding his birth and early life, mostly speculation, very little
substance unless you are of great faith in the church contrivations and
3rd/4th century rewrites.

 Archaeologically speaking, there is no hope of reconstituting a
single, politically unimportant man's life in that period, with the remote
possibility you could find a skeleton (nullifying the biblical account)
you would end up testing it for elements that would tell you where the
person was raised. The deniers of Jesus often tout the lack of evidence,
such lacking of evidence is expected for 99.9% of the society of the time,
go further east and it is 99.999%. To be fair to the cristian perspective
if we assume the gospils are embellished, there is no way we can dice
Jesus, putative son of Joseph the Carpenter out of history, it would be
akin to pulling a needle out of a haystack. The claims of tomb of James
discovery turned to be a fraud, we are going to be very suspicious with
future claims, we expect few to be verified. That is the archaeology. What
may be more important is to dice out how people lived or the political and
social influences of the time.
 And let us be quite honest, when religious proselytizers ask us to have
faith they are not asking us to have faith in christ, but to have faith
that their spiritual ancestors have gotten the correct story and that
it was carried with fidelity from Jesus's (and families) mouth to book.
It is not a call to spiritual faith, but to a interpretative/enscriptive
faith. What they do is insert the hand of god argument to repair any
potential inaccuracies. We only need to look at the history of the church
to see how very perilous that position is.
 In the end we cannot really rely on any accounts except those written
accounts that are written within one generation (31 to 56AD) and verifyable
by some scientific technique. Even then embellishments if the source is not
bonafida first hand. The romans crucified many people, and basically you
had no rights unless you could prove you were a citizen of rome. Therefore,
the crucifiction offers up no proof, a disappointment to many christians.
The reasonings may also be of issue, for instance if the
romans were aware of parthian activities and subtrifuge, that might have
been reason enough for execution, in fact, without roman documention we
have no independent first hand source of their reason, what the bible
claims is speculation. If unfair execution is a grounds for high spiritual
claims hundreds of christs are flowing out of the streets of Iraq.
 The other contentious claim is the prophesy regarding Israel, but
is not exactly prophesy if you take christs position of being able
to see the signs of the times, it is akin to predicting the outbreak
of civil war in Iraq with the overthrow of Saddam Hussien, and astute
political scientist could have predicted as much. Many scholars actually
question whether christ made this claim, but according to Tomas,
a claim-like a dire prophesy was made, for who it is unclear and
when is unclear. Once again the key fact is that there was civil strife
in the region, it was at times a political and military weak point in the
roman empire that people would take advantage of, history shows the romans
always returned to make 'corrections'. It was a time to examine
the signs of the times, as Josephus and others would more
appropriately do, also to no avail.
  Its not exactly difficult, identify the most
ruthless/powerful political entity and rightly predict how the civil
strife will end. Civil strife in the region
was neither limited to the early christian period or to Israel if one
reads the history, but one major difference is the impact on Judaism
that depended on Jeruselem as the seat of religious authority. Other
religions suffered similar fates, and some completely died out. So
cannot use or tie the demise of Zionism and the fate of Israel to
some special example of suppression. Most of the religions that have
existed in the region are now extinct, if you had a patron god for
a city and it was attacked, as happened many times, your patron
god went to the bottom of the local pantheon, or worse. Sin, was
the patron god of Ur, the moon god, later demoted to the god of
sex and then a demon of sexual behavior, in the bible completely
stripped of diety.
  In addition
it was not a single fall of Jeruselem, Israel survived at least several
generations and the real fall of Israel occurs in the middle third of the
second century, at which point all connect between Judaism and Israel is
lost until the later Ottoman/Mandate period as jews increasingly settled
back into northern Israel, travel to Jeruselem was at the likes or dislikes
of the turks.
 Within the archaeology that has been discovered the Jews that remained
between 68 and 130AD where probably not christian and showed signs of
romanization and hellenization, and most of the biblical history concurs
that the various factions were undergoing westernization. Facing the fact
that the very short period of under the Achaemenid Empire blessing in
which Judaism undergoes a 'druidic'-like reinvention with whatever they
can get away with under the parthians, and part of that is to basically
cause alot of the men to leave their wives, and adopt completely new
traditions, major changes began and continued through the roman period.
The actual call to fundemental judean spiritual principles would be akin
to asking Druidis to call for spiritual principles of the 3rd century B.C.
Again what they have to fall back on are the spiritual principles of a
youthful religion and the more mature religiouns that infiltrate the area.
None of this the archaeology can attribute to a single group, much less
an individual who may or may not have been of that group. So again
one is left speculating on the intensity of cultural flow.

 A good guess is this, certain Judeic branches adopted certain aspects
of these foriegn religions (as each has many aspects that can be adopted)
and other branched adopted other apects. Some more strongly favored roman
and others more strongly favored eastern. Therefore it a matter of figuring
out which in fluences are most prominent in which small portion of writing
one finds representative. Therefore we need more early writings.

    Thiering was an idiot the last three times you made a fool of yourself
presenting her nonsense and remains an idiot to this day.