November 14, 2011
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The controversy between Pagan and Christians have been brewing for many years. Thousands
of years differing religions have been fighting each other, and
amazingly, most of the fighting has been over interpretations of
writings and oral histories. The Pagan way of looking at this is that
the Christian element have killed over 9 million people in the name of
Jesus in the past 2000 years. Of course, it is way higher than that,
because, just like today, hundreds of thousands of people are being
killed by a "Christian USA" and not being reported.
The
theory that Jews wrote down the most perfect of letters on a tablet is
kind of where we have to start in our assessment of modern religion. The
theory that slaves that walked around the dessert for 40 years could
actually put together a piece of work that is not only read one way, by
the letters, but that each letter had a numerical value seems to be
quite a stretch. At the time that these scrolls were being written,
there was a group of folks that could do this, and the names of the
people were many. Many of the alphabets of the times were credited to
many groups, but even the direct linkage of one group of Celtic warrior
priests, links to others of the same persuasion of religious groups, set
us up to have a world wide group writing in many places under many
names.
The fact
that Julius Caesar wrote in 62 BCE about a group of priests gives us
pause as to really know who we are talking about. Caesar referred to
them as Druids, but of course, there were many groups of Priest class
groups around that were amazingly called pretty much another, but
different, word. It would seem that if two things that were basically
the same, but called something else by a letter or two, would be pretty
close to the same.
In Bible history, Jesus' story was told around Jews, yet many thought he was dealing with Essenes, yet what exactly was the group they were connected to called "Druze"? As for Western sources, Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveler who passed through Lebanon in or about 1165, was one of the first European writers to refer to the Druzes by name. The word Dogziyin ("Druzes") occurs in an early Hebrew edition of his travels, but it is clear that this is a scribal error. Be that as it may, he described the Druze as "mountain dwellers, monotheists, who believe in 'soul eternity' and reincarnation."
So
you give any thought at all to the names of the basic tribes around,
Druid, Druze, Drui, or even the Pythagoreans which stemmed from 5th
Century BCE. The legacy of Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato was claimed by the wisdom
tradition of the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria, on the ground that their
teachings derived from those of Moses. Through Philo of Alexandria this
tradition passed into the Medieval culture, with the idea that groups
of things of the same number are related or in sympathy. This idea
evidently influenced Hegel in his concept of internal relations. Now
you have the Hebrews claiming rights of ideas that do not belong to
them, and you have a hijacked history of a group that was mystical way
before the Hebrews.
The translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek (the Septuagint) can be regarded as
the conception of Christianity, because the Septuagint was the official Bible of the
non-Palestinian Hellenist Jews, who brought about Gentile Christianity. The Septuagint
became the Bible of all the Gentile Christians. The New Testament writers borrowed most of
their Old Testament quotations from the Septuagint. The Palestinian Jews rejected the
Septuagint because it deviated considerably from the Hebrew text. It contained extra books
such as the Old Testament Apocrypha. The Jews rejected the Apocrypha. They did not even
consider them in the meeting in Jamnia at 90 CE. The Daniel of the Septuagint contained
three sections, which were not part of the Hebrew Daniel: The Prayer of Azariah and The Hymn of The Three Young Men, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon. The Septuagint Psalms
included an extra psalm, psalm 151. These insertions and most of the Old Testament
Apocryphal books remained part of the Septuagint (the Bible of Christianity) until the
Council of Trent (1545-1563 CE) removed them (the Catholics kept some of them, and called
them Deutero-canonical).
The Septuagint became an international book. Philo wrote, “The entire race of
mankind might be benefited, by using these philosophical and totally beautiful
commandments {the Septuagint} for the correction of their lives.” Its
translation was celebrated yearly by Hellenist Jews and Gentiles. Philo wrote, “Even
to this very day, there is every year a solemn assembly held and a festival celebrated in
the island of Pharos {where the lighthouse of Alexandria was located}, to which not only
the Jews but a great number of persons from other nations sail across {to
attend}.” The Septuagint made available to the Gentiles the god of the Jews. It
also fueled the Hellenistic Jewish movement in Alexandria and the writings of Philo, which
brought about the birth of Gentile Christianity.
Since Alexander the Great gave the Alexandrian Jews special privileges, and his
successors gave them the privilege to be called Macedonians, they were by far more
Hellenized than the Jews of Palestine. They studied Greek philosophy, they embraced the
terms and ideas of the Stoics, of the Middle Platonists, and of Pythagoras. The
Alexandrian Hellenist Jewish writers asserted that Pythagoras taught the doctrines of
Judaism. They claimed that the fallen angels of God (the “sons of God” mentioned
in the 6th chapter of Genesis) taught God’s doctrines to Pythagoras. They used Greek
stories (which they altered to fit their message) and Greek sayings to promote Hellenistic
Judaism to Gentiles. During the Christian era Paul used the same method to promote Gentile
Christianity to Gentiles. He employed popular Greek beliefs and sayings to attract the
Gentiles. Paul explained his method like this: “To the Jews I became as a Jew, so
that I might win Jews. ... to those who are without law, as without law ... so
that I might win those who are without law. ... I have become all things to all men,
so that I may by all means save some. I do all things for the sake of the gospel ...”
(1 Corinthians 9:20-23 NASB)
Aristobulus of Alexandria (flourished at about 150 BCE), the first Jewish
“religious philosopher,” made a very affirmative evaluation of the Pythagoreans
. He made extensive use of the Pythagorean numerological doctrines. Later, the writer of
the apocryphal book Wisdom of Solomon, who probably was an Alexandrian Hellenist
Jew, promoted Judaism using Pythagorean beliefs. Aristobulus wrote The Explanations to the Book of Moses, of which
only short fragments have been preserved to us by Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius.
Clement of Alexandria wrote that Aristobulus’ aim was “to bring the Peripatetic
philosophy out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets.” In one of his surviving
fragments Aristobulus made the assertion that Plato and Pythagoras borrowed much of their
philosophy from an early Greek translation of Moses’ law. (There was no Greek
translation of Moses’ law before the Septuagint.) By claiming that Moses inspired
Plato and Pythagoras, Aristobulus linked Judaism with Greek philosophy to win Gentiles
over to Judaism. He interpreted the Pentateuch according to Greek philosophy, primarily
Stoic and secondarily Platonic and Pythagorean. He interpreted the law
allegorically to make Judaism palatable to the Gentiles. Aristobulus was one of the
first Hellenist Jews to use the allegorical method of interpretation, a method founded by
Plato. This method of interpretation led to the creation of Christianity. Two hundred
years later, Paul used Aristobulus’ method. He, too, interpreted the law
allegorically, to make his religion palatable to the Gentiles.
What we have here is groups of people pointing fingers at each other saying that this person was right, that one person wrote books based upon the laws of someone else, meanwhile using the new manuscripts. It is still logical that since the books were continually written and the "philosophy" of religion discussed by philosophers who were determining ideas and thought concepts way ahead of the basic slave/Jew on the street. But who exactly is writing the books of the Bible?
Scholars differ on when the various authors wrote and when the Redaction
occurred. No one today knows who the initial authors were--the
predominant view is that many of the stories were handed down orally for
generations before being written down. It's not clear which texts are
older (although the Song at the Sea in Exodus 15:1-8 is usually
acknowledged as among the oldest verses), or which author wrote which
verses. Nor is there agreement on the gender of the authors. Some
scholars believe the J-writer was a woman, as described in The Book of J by David Rosenberg and Harold Bloom (1990).
Basically, even with the "predominant" view being stories handed down orally, who could even go against the fact that since if you see Druidry, or whatever it name it could be, you understand that the stories of Druidry were handed down orally, and since they are older than what has been established, that the group of Priest class people, that may and or may not have included Plato, Pythagoreus, Soccrates, and even some of the names associated with the Bible would be from "THE" mystic group that encompassed many continents and showed at differing times, that "The Word", or "The Way" was being taught by the Priest Class of Atlantis way before the Bible was being shaped, and that as such, we can feel right knowing that the Druids did indeed write the books of the Bible and that each time a Redaction would take place, something else changed in the book, as well as it's perception.