Did the 3 Magi Represent a Break From Judaism?

[bob x]

If you were to compare Zoroaster's philosophy, rituals, celebrations...

I do not know of one single solitary example of any ritual found in both Christianity and Zoroastrianism, and I know for a fact that there is not a single holiday in common. As for the "philosophy", the concept that "good" people get a good afterlife and "bad" people a bad one is a clear borrowing, as I have always acknowledged, but the ethical philosophy about what, specifically, is "good" and what is "bad" did not carry over at all. Zoroastrianism as you mentioned on another thread considers bodily pleasures as among the good gifts Ahura Mazda created for us; the Hebrew tradition by contrast tied sexual morality to the duty to procreate, and Christianity developed an extreme suspicion of all forms of pleasure, more reminiscent of the extreme asceticism found in some of the religions of India. Zoroastrianism regards wealth and power as signs of God's favor; such tendencies have appeared in Christianity but are antithetical to the founding tradition, which regarded the poor and weak as the presumptively good.

I think that these people possessed the qualities that brought them close enough to Divine Union to consider them personifications of God.

I believe that within Zoroastrianism it would be quite heretical to speak of Zoroaster as a "personification of God"; and I know for a fact that within Islam, it would be not just heretical, but profoundly offensive, to speak of Muhammad that way. Within Christianity, however, Jesus is the personification of God-- and there is no such thing as any "intermediate" between Jesus and God.

Got examples? Important ones? Early ones?

I already told you that counting days in sevens was the very first commandment Moses received (before the famous Ten Commandments, which reiterated it), and that this is a development of a tradition attested as early as Sargon of Akkad, prior to 2000 BC.

The tradition is that the 3 Magi brought 3 gifts with them from the east "Good thoughts, Good Words, and Good Deeds."

And where, and when, does this "tradition" arise? The TEXT says "gold, frankincense, and myrrh."

There's no problem here Bob X and I don't take it for granted. I'm aware that these loan words are just not easy to trace.

I am looking into Mallory's claim that "god", "holy", and "paradise" in Slavic are Iranian loans, will tell you what I find.

According to Geiger in "Arithmetica" the author mentions Zoroaster in connection with angels/stars. This text is contemporary with dating of the nearly complete texts of the NT around 3 CE.

(Bangs head). WHAT author? WHAT text? Why do you have such a problem telling me what you are talking about?

Doesn't the star move and appear hover over the newborn Christ?

No.

 

[mojobadshah]

I do not know of one single solitary example of any ritual found in both Christianity and Zoroastrianism, and I know for a fact that there is not a single holiday in common. As for the "philosophy", the concept that "good" people get a good afterlife and "bad" people a bad one is a clear borrowing, as I have always acknowledged, but the ethical philosophy about what, specifically, is "good" and what is "bad" did not carry over at all. Zoroastrianism as you mentioned on another thread considers bodily pleasures as among the good gifts Ahura Mazda created for us; the Hebrew tradition by contrast tied sexual morality to the duty to procreate, and Christianity developed an extreme suspicion of all forms of pleasure, more reminiscent of the extreme asceticism found in some of the religions of India. Zoroastrianism regards wealth and power as signs of God's favor; such tendencies have appeared in Christianity but are antithetical to the founding tradition, which regarded the poor and weak as the presumptively good.

I'm not going to divulge all the details, but I think that for the most part we are in agreement that the idea of 1.) a loving one God 2.) an arch-nemesis 3.) angels and demons 4.) the Kingdom of Heaven 5.) an afterlife in either heaven or hell contingent upon the weight of one's good and bad deeds 6.) purgatory 7.) a Messianic figure 8.) the resurrection, and 9.) a judgment day is the basis for the Christian ideology and was derived from the Zoroastrians through the Jews.

As far as rituals both the Zoroastrians and the Christians have their Eucharists. The Zoroastrians drink Haoma (which Greco-Roman sources claim was once mixed with wolf's blood) and eat wafers or Dron. The Christians drink wine and eat wafers. I do, however, recall you claiming that the pass over was the direct antecedent to the Christian Eucharist. Both Zoroastrians and Christians have confession. "Zoroastrian faithful would mark their foreheads with ash before approaching the sacred fire, a gesture that resembles the Ash Wednesday tradition. Part of their purification before participating in ritual was the confession of sins, categorized (as Catholics do) as consisting of thought, word, or deed" - Zoroastrianism The Forgotten and Lost Sources

As far as celebrations:

"Finally, Zoroastrians observed All Soul's Day, like the Catholics reflecting a belief in intercession both by and for the dead." - Zoroastrianism The Forgotten and Lost Sources

I also have a hypothesis about where the date for Christ/Mithras birth came about. December 25 falls during Dae Mah which is the month of the creator.

Both Zoroaster and Jesus

1.) Their mother's received apparitions before their births
2.) They were both immaculately conceived
3.) A luminary was associated with both their births
4.) Wisemen were guided by this luminary to them
5.) There were attempts to assassinate them
6.) They both had siblings
7.) They were known for arguing with elders at an early age
8.) Zoroaster converts his cousin Maidyo-Mah and conversely John converts his cousin Jesus
9.) They both have an intervention at a river with the Holy Spirit at the age of 30
10.) Their intervention is proceeded by a time in solitude
11.) They're both tempted by the Devil and are offered rulership
12.) They both commune with God in a mountain
13.) They both preach away from home
14.) They both cure diseases and exorcise demons
15.) They both restore a blind man's sight
16.) They both walk on water
17.) They both control the weather
18.) Holymen put both of them to the test
19.) They're both martyred
20.) the three days of resurrection may have a correlation to the 3 days it takes a soul to make it's ascent to heaven in Zoroastrianism and I think there's even a Gnostic text that is named after Zoroaster that has some correlation to the resurrection. "At any rate Zoroaster himself writes:-- ‘These things have been written by Zoroaster, son of Armenius, a pamphylian, who died in battle, arrived in Hades and was taught there by the gods.’ As to this Zoroaster, Plato recounts that he lay on his funeral bed on the twelfth day and revived. He here perhaps metaphorically implies a resurrection, as well as the idea that through the way across the 12 zodical signs the soul is taken up, and says that by the same way the souls come down when they come into (material) existence.” –Wilhelm Geiger, Zarathushtra in the Gathas, and in the Greek and Roman Classics pg. 44-45

And where, and when, does this "tradition" arise? The TEXT says "gold, frankincense, and myrrh.".

You're right. You're right. But if the Magi were Zoroastrians it would make sense that they introduced this trinity of "Good Thoughts, Good Words, and Good Deeds" to the west. I'm pretty sure that this tradition comes from a Persian speaking nation.

(Bangs head). WHAT author? WHAT text? Why do you have such a problem telling me what you are talking about?

The author of "Arithmetica"...

No.

[9] When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.

Reads like it was some kind of Zoroastrian halo to me.

 

[mojobadshah]

I was wrong about the Gnostic thing, but you might find the site where this quote comes from interesting.

"In another late prophecy it speaks of humankind being in the grave for three days and three nights before passing over into the afterlife.[20] This explains why Clopas the uncle of Jesus said, "They crucified him… and what's more, this is the third day," as if everyone knew the third day was significant.[21]" Did Zarathustra (Zoroaster) Prophecy the Coming of Christ?

There would also appear to be a connection between Noe Ruz and Easter which also has to do with the resurrection.

Also the Zoroastrian All Souls Day is called Farvardingan and is celebrated in September which is not to for off from October.

Also Zoroaster like Jesus was the word incarnate.

 

[bob x]

I'm not going to divulge all the details

What is it with you and not revealing what you are talking about? It is seriously annoying and often makes dialogue with you seem a waste of time.

but I think that for the most part we are in agreement that the idea of 1.) a loving one God 2.) an arch-nemesis 3.) angels and demons 4.) the Kingdom of Heaven 5.) an afterlife in either heaven or hell contingent upon the weight of one's good and bad deeds 6.) purgatory 7.) a Messianic figure 8.) the resurrection, and 9.) a judgment day is the basis for the Christian ideology and was derived from the Zoroastrians through the Jews.

No on 1: a loving God is a concept found elsewhere also. Yes on 2-5: all of these are plainly concepts borrowed into Persian/Hellenistic/Roman era Judaism and from that into Christianity and Islam. No on 6: I know of no such concept in Zoroastrianism as "purgatory" (Zoroastrianism is very black-and-white with little idea of "gray"), nor is it foundational to Christianity (it was a medieval elaboration, rejected by many Christians). As to 7, the Hebrews were expecting a "Messiah" in the form of a restoration of the Davidic monarchy, but the concept evolved, partly in response to Zoroastrian ideas. Yes on 8-9: that is part of the package with 2-5.

As far as rituals both the Zoroastrians and the Christians have their Eucharists. The Zoroastrians drink Haoma (which Greco-Roman sources claim was once mixed with wolf's blood) and eat wafers or Dron.

The haoma was not wine, and was drunk only by priests, not by the whole community; it was not a "Eucharist" ceremony (look up the meaning of that word). There is no mention of "wafers" in the Avesta, and I could find little about the dron except that it seems to have been a rare ritual, of medieval origin, possibly derived from the Christian antecedent rather than the reverse, although more analogous to "saying grace" before a meal (giving thanks for the gift of food).

Both Zoroastrians and Christians have confession.

I grant you this one.

"Finally, Zoroastrians observed All Soul's Day, like the Catholics reflecting a belief in intercession both by and for the dead." - Zoroastrianism The Forgotten and Lost Sources

I have no idea which Zoroastrian holiday is here being renamed "All Souls' Day", but borrowing the Christian name for it sounds like trying to create a parallel that really isn't there.

I also have a hypothesis about where the date for Christ/Mithras birth came about. December 25 falls during Dae Mah which is the month of the creator.

Before the Roman calendar drifted, December 25 was the winter solstice (the equinoxes and solstices were all supposed to be fixed on the 25th, but 365 1/4 days is not quite accurate and the dates shifted).

Both Zoroaster and Jesus

1.) Their mother's received apparitions before their births
2.) They were both immaculately conceived
3.) A luminary was associated with both their births
4.) Wisemen were guided by this luminary to them
5.) There were attempts to assassinate them
6.) They both had siblings
7.) They were known for arguing with elders at an early age
8.) Zoroaster converts his cousin Maidyo-Mah and conversely John converts his cousin Jesus
9.) They both have an intervention at a river with the Holy Spirit at the age of 30
10.) Their intervention is proceeded by a time in solitude
11.) They're both tempted by the Devil and are offered rulership
12.) They both commune with God in a mountain
13.) They both preach away from home
14.) They both cure diseases and exorcise demons
15.) They both restore a blind man's sight
16.) They both walk on water
17.) They both control the weather
18.) Holymen put both of them to the test
19.) They're both martyred
20.) the three days of resurrection may have a correlation to the 3 days it takes a soul to make it's ascent to heaven in Zoroastrianism and I think there's even a Gnostic text that is named after Zoroaster that has some correlation to the resurrection.

Where are you getting your biography of Zoroaster? The Dhalla source I gave you seemed well-informed, and has none of this stuff in it. This sounds like "Acharya S", an infamous charlatan who posts on the web that every religious figure in the history of the world had the same biography as Jesus.

"At any rate Zoroaster himself writes:-- ‘These things have been written by Zoroaster, son of Armenius, a pamphylian, who died in battle, arrived in Hades and was taught there by the gods.’ As to this Zoroaster, Plato recounts that he lay on his funeral bed on the twelfth day and revived. He here perhaps metaphorically implies a resurrection, as well as the idea that through the way across the 12 zodical signs the soul is taken up, and says that by the same way the souls come down when they come into (material) existence.” –Wilhelm Geiger, Zarathushtra in the Gathas, and in the Greek and Roman Classics pg. 44-45

Where in Plato is this supposed to be? I cannot find any indication that Plato ever heard the name of "Zoroaster" at all, not even in such a severely distorted version.

But if the Magi were Zoroastrians it would make sense that they introduced this trinity of "Good Thoughts, Good Words, and Good Deeds" to the west. I'm pretty sure that this tradition comes from a Persian speaking nation.

But no such "trinity" was ever introduced to the west. You are the first source that I have ever heard of this from. There is no such "tradition" outside of Persia.

The author of "Arithmetica"...

This does not help me figure out what book you could possibly be talking about. The only ancient text named Arithmetica that I (or Google, for that matter) have ever heard of is the famous work on number theory (equations which can solve in integers) by Diophantus. It has no discussion of Persia or religion in it; it contains stuff like this:

From any two numbers, one even and one odd, a Pythagorean triple [solution to a-squared plus b-squared equals c-squared] can be formed as the difference of squares, double the product, and the sum of squares; and all Pythagorean triples can be formed from such, by multiplication with a common factor. [For example, 2-squared minus 1-squared is 3, double 2-times-1 is 4, and 2-squared plus 1-squared is 5, thus 3-squared (9) plus 4-squared (16) gives 5-squared (25); or, 3-squared minus 2-squared is 5, double 3-times-2 is 12, and 3-squared plus 2-squared is 13, so 5-squared plus 12-squared is 13-squared; we could take (3,4,5) or (5,12,13) times a common 2 to give (6,8,10) or (10,24,26) or times a common 3 to give (9,12,15) etc. and those are all the solutions in integers to the Pythagorean equation.]

[9] When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.

Reads like it was some kind of Zoroastrian halo to me.

Reads nothing like that to me.

I was wrong about the Gnostic thing, but you might find the site where this quote comes from interesting.

"In another late prophecy it speaks of humankind being in the grave for three days and three nights before passing over into the afterlife.[20] This explains why Clopas the uncle of Jesus said, "They crucified him… and what's more, this is the third day," as if everyone knew the third day was significant.[21]" Did Zarathustra (Zoroaster) Prophecy the Coming of Christ?

This is another of your "raving lunatic" sources, as you ought to be able to tell just by looking at it; but what is worse, this one appears to be actively dishonest. I have so far not found a single one of his "quotations" from ancient sources to be genuine.

There would also appear to be a connection between Noe Ruz and Easter which also has to do with the resurrection.

Nawruz has nothing to do with anybody's resurrection, and is a strictly solar festival, pegged to the equinox, whereas Easter is scheduled with reference to the full moon, in accordance with the Hebrew tradition of Passover, and with reference to the seven-day week, a tradition which went back all the way to the beginning of the Hebrew tradition and to previous peoples in the Mideast, but which was not adopted in Persia.

Also the Zoroastrian All Souls Day is called Farvardingan and is celebrated in September which is not to for off from October.

On the Judaism board, I discussed farvar in connection with the Jewish Purim, a Persian-era invention. The Persian calendar was changed from lunisolar (months of 29 or 30 days to match the phases, with a 13th month occasionally to match the seasons) to the Egyptian style (12 months of 30 days plus 5 extra days; no "leap-day" to deal with the fractional remainder) and consequently slowly drifted around the seasons until Omar Khayyam introduced leap-days in the 11th century AD, unfortunately leaving all the months in the wrong position: Farvar was supposed to be in the weeks before Nawruz, not in the fall; the root is the same as Latin Februalia from which we get "February" (it is also the root of fever and fervor; in Hebrew it became Perwarim eroding to Purim). The nature of the holiday was a "festival of fools" in which people deliberately defied the usual social conventions, getting very drunk (so they could have the excuse that it was the drink talking) and wearing masks (so they could pretend not to be recognized).

Also Zoroaster like Jesus was the word incarnate.

No. That phrase "the word incarnate" is not Zoroastrian at all. You are not following the old tradition, but inventing a new one, with heavy borrowings from Christianity, and pretending that it is ancient.

 

[mojobadshah]

What is it with you and not revealing what you are talking about? It is seriously annoying and often makes dialogue with you seem a waste of time.

Sorry, I'm just a bit reserved about revealing everything I know all at once. I prefer my findings to remain somewhat obscure.

No on 1: a loving God is a concept found elsewhere also. Yes on 2-5: all of these are plainly concepts borrowed into Persian/Hellenistic/Roman era Judaism and from that into Christianity and Islam. No on 6: I know of no such concept in Zoroastrianism as "purgatory" (Zoroastrianism is very black-and-white with little idea of "gray"), nor is it foundational to Christianity (it was a medieval elaboration, rejected by many Christians). As to 7, the Hebrews were expecting a "Messiah" in the form of a restoration of the Davidic monarchy, but the concept evolved, partly in response to Zoroastrian ideas. Yes on 8-9: that is part of the package with 2-5.

The Zoroastrian concept is known as Hamastagan "same state." Maybe limbo would be a better translation, but I have seen published sources define it as purgatory, and it was my understanding that the Catholics believe in purgatory while the Protestants don't.

The haoma was not wine, and was drunk only by priests, not by the whole community; it was not a "Eucharist" ceremony (look up the meaning of that word). There is no mention of "wafers" in the Avesta, and I could find little about the dron except that it seems to have been a rare ritual, of medieval origin, possibly derived from the Christian antecedent rather than the reverse, although more analogous to "saying grace" before a meal (giving thanks for the gift of food).

Of course the symbolism behind the rituals aren't going to be exactly the same. But haoma was an intoxicating substance and was even personified in the Avesta. The Dron was a 'round, sacred unleavened breads made of wheat flour with nine cuts in the middle.'

I have no idea which Zoroastrian holiday is here being renamed "All Souls' Day", but borrowing the Christian name for it sounds like trying to create a parallel that really isn't there.

Farvardinigan. Farvardin means fall in Persian.

Before the Roman calendar drifted, December 25 was the winter solstice (the equinoxes and solstices were all supposed to be fixed on the 25th, but 365 1/4 days is not quite accurate and the dates shifted).

Well I figured that it had something to do with the Winter Solstice, but what does the Winter Solstice have to do with God. Would Dae "God" Month be a more reasonable deduction for where the association between the Winter Solstice and God comes from?

Where are you getting your biography of Zoroaster? The Dhalla source I gave you seemed well-informed, and has none of this stuff in it. This sounds like "Acharya S", an infamous charlatan who posts on the web that every religious figure in the history of the world had the same biography as Jesus.

Mostly the Avesta, the Denkard, the Zadspram, the Zartushtnama, Abraham Valentine Williams Jackson's "Zoroaster: The Prophet of Ancient Iran," Loren Harper Whitney's "Life and Teachings of Zoroaster the Great Persian," and Geiger's "Zarathushtra in the Gathas, and in the Greek and Roman Classics"

But no such "trinity" was ever introduced to the west. You are the first source that I have ever heard of this from. There is no such "tradition" outside of Persia.

Yeah, but the message or gift or Maga : have good thought, word, and deed, was introduced to the Greco-Romans through Christianity. Was Jesus not an embodiment of these three qualities?

Reads nothing like that to me.

It sounds very similar to how the Kharena or Halo was described in Zoroastrian tradition.

"1. About the glory of Zartosht becoming manifest even before his birth, it is thus declared, that forty-five years before the time when Zartosht came out to his conference, when Freno gave birth to the mother of Zartosht, whom they called Dukdaub, it came down from the endless light, in the manner of fire, and mingled with the fire which was before her; and from the fire it mingled with the mother of Zartosht. 2. For three nights it was manifest, to all passers-by, as a species of fire in the direction of the house, and passers on the road always saw great radiance. 3. Also when she became fifteen years old, the radiance of that glory which was in her, was even such that, on the path she was walking along, its brightness was then shed by her. - Zadsparm 13.1-3

Where in Plato is this supposed to be? I cannot find any indication that Plato ever heard the name of "Zoroaster" at all, not even in such a severely distorted version.

According to Geiger Theopompus Philippika bore testimony to Resurrection doctrine of the Magi. And see Zarathushtra in the Gathas and in the Greek and Roman Classics. You might want to try key word searching "Er" for more information on this. My copy of Geiger is a reprint, totally messed up, and doesn't correspond to the original at all.

This does not help me figure out what book you could possibly be talking about.

Sorry wrong book. Like I said my copy is messed up. Look here Zarathushtra in the Gathas and in the Greek and Roman Classics for the exact title. I can't really find to much on it either.

This is another of your "raving lunatic" sources, as you ought to be able to tell just by looking at it; but what is worse, this one appears to be actively dishonest. I have so far not found a single one of his "quotations" from ancient sources to be genuine.

It's some random website. What do you expect, but this was L.H. Mill's translation which is not that different from the "raving lunatic."

Yasna 43.16. And Zarathushtra himself, O Ahura, chooses each one of thy holiest Spirit, O Mazda. May Right be embodied full of life and strength!

Nawruz has nothing to do with anybody's resurrection, and is a strictly solar festival, pegged to the equinox, whereas Easter is scheduled with reference to the full moon, in accordance with the Hebrew tradition of Passover, and with reference to the seven-day week, a tradition which went back all the way to the beginning of the Hebrew tradition and to previous peoples in the Mideast, but which was not adopted in Persia.

I guess birth of a New Year or Nawruz and resurrection which Easter is all about isn't exactly the same thing, but what is the significance of the full moon, New Moon?

No. That phrase "the word incarnate" is not Zoroastrian at all. You are not following the old tradition, but inventing a new one, with heavy borrowings from Christianity, and pretending that it is ancient.

91. 'Ardvi Sura Anahita answered: "O pure, holy Spitama! this is the sacrifice wherewith thou shalt worship me, this is the sacrifice wherewith thou shalt worship and forward me, from the time when the sun is rising to the time when the sun is setting.
'"Of this libation of mine thou shalt drink, thou who art an Athravan, who hast asked and learnt the revealed law, who art wise, clever, and the Word incarnate. - Aban Yasht

This isn't ancient enough?

 

[Amergin]

Aside from the pervasive use of the Jewish Scriptures, you mean?

The so-called pervasive use of Jewish scriptures was nothing less than Pagan Romans cutting and pasting from among more extensive Jewish scriptures, a few, out of context, and twisted out of context. I am not sure why the Proto-Christians used the Jewish scriptures at all. They really have no obvious connection to the Athanasian-Trinitarian Pagan religion later called Christianity. Since the Proto-Christians like Paul and Athanasius were motivated by the more or less mythical Jesus, they borrowed Jewish writings in a weak attempt to show Jesus being a prophesied Messiah. This is why the O.T. and N.T. demonstrate two totally different world views and Theologies.

The Zoroastrian element in Islam is much stronger than in Christianity. The judgment day, heaven, and hell are not just of occasional mention as in the New Testament; the majority of the Qur'an onsists of tedious repetitions that "to the good people good things will happen, and to the bad people bad things will happen" with a twisted emphasis on describing in crude terms the torments of hell or the materialistic pleasures in heaven. Unlike in Judaism or Christianity, there is no other basis for morality attempted, except that "good" is what will get rewarded and "bad" is what will get punished.

The Judgment Day, Heaven, and Hell are hardly mentioned at all in the N.T. They are in the Book of Revelations which is not a legitimate part of the N.T. Revelations inverts Jesus into a vicious, merciless killer, not the good man of the 4 Gospels. It was written by a madman on the Isle of Patmos and is full of Zoroastrian concepts besides totally demonising Jesus. Islam promote a more pure morality than Christianity. In Islam, wrong is wrong, sin is sin, and have consequences. In Christianity wrong is not irreversibly wrong, sin is not unforgivable by confession or faith in Jesus. That relativistic morality of Christianity is one of its major faults and why Islam has been more attractive to potential converts. As I have posted before, in Catholicism and Evangelical Fundamentalism, morality is so relativistic as to be almost meaningless. Those who believe that anything they do is OK, sin being forgiven, there is no absolute morality.

I get so sick and tired of having to point out to you over and over again what PURE RUBBISH this is. Zoroastrianism was a REBELLION AGAINST Indo-European paganism; and depicts a God who has seven, not three, hypostases.

Zoroastrianism founded by Zarathrusta not a "Zoroaster" as a reform of the Old Iranian religion which evolved from the Old Indo-European Religion. Religions evolve over time but often retain major structure. Christian Mythology does have the 12 apostles that correspond to the 12 signs of the Zodiac.

"Driudism" as you understand it is a creation of 18th-century romantics with no particular connection to ancestral Celtic mythologies. Olympianism and its Roman copy had a set of twelve, not three, supreme deities.

The structure of ancient Celtic Religion is largely unknown because it was not written down. It is mainly known from oral traditions that were conveniently written about by Christian monks during the transition to Christian Ireland. Various Celtic regions showed similar Father God even if names varied due to dialect differences. The Father God could be Aed Alainn, Dagda, Dis Pater, Dwyvan, and Cernunnos. The Son of that God could be Lugh, Lu, Lieu, Lugna and other similar Sun/Son Gods. The Messenger God (equivalent to the Holy Ghost) in Celtic Isles was Lir or Lugus.

Indo-European religions had more than three gods as you know. You claim Christianity has only three in the Trinity or the barmy idea of 3=1, 1=3, 1+3=3, and 3+1=1. Christianity has many other gods similar to its other Indo-European cousins. They spin that by calling their lesser gods, saints. There is the Virgin Mary (equivalent to Celtic Brigit and Danu), St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Thomas, St. Margaret, St.John, ect.ect ect ect ect ect ect ect ect ect ect ect ect . And then we have the Evil Pantheon of Satan or Lucifer and at least a dozen other named Devils.

No. Just... no.

Oh, you are a Tea Party Republican, programmed to say 'No.".

"Saving grace" is unique to Pauline Christianity: Zoroastrianism is pure "salvation by works" in theological terms, where nothing matters except what you do; the notion of a God forgiving you despite you not deserving it is as alien to Zoroastrianism as to any other religion. Mithraism does appear to have had a communal meal ritual, involving the drinking of bull's blood to wash down beef, but there was no concept that this was "eating God" and no involvement of bread; and while your notion that medieval communion wafers came to be standardized in a circular shape out of some "solar disk" notion is popular especially among 7th-Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other believers in Catholic-Church-as-Antichrist, I do not think it is particularly historical. Judaism is MUCH MUCH more "obsessed with the number 7" than any other religion; Christianity is more obsessed with 3. The end-times war, final judgment etc. are certainly part of the Zoroastrian contribution to Christianity, but through the medium of 1st-century Jews (see "The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness" from Qumran) than from "Mithraists" who probably did not even have such a concept.

The Roman branch of Mithraic Zoroastrianism abandoned the use of Bull's blood and instead made bread wafers in a round disk that was the Solar Disk representing Mithra as the Sun God as well as Son of God. That was borrowed by evolving Christianity, as were bishops wearing Mitres.

Mithraists if they believed that sin counts, and that it cannot be erased by some dogmatic loop hole. In that way it is similar to modern Atheists who have the strongest moral standards (lowest crime rate, lowest divorce rate, 0.2% or US prison population while 5-10% of American population. Atheists live by a superior morality because we know sins cannot be erased. Wrong is wrong, sin is sin. No loop holes. We carry our wrongs in our conscience to our deaths. Perhaps that was a reason for Christianity's triumph and absorption of Mithraism and Indo-European Paganism. Christianity made committing sin easier because it could be erased like it never happened. We (Atheists) know that if we do wrong, it is a permanent scar in our memory circuits. Christianity was in a respect, a license to sin.

International statistics show that the least religious countries have the lowest crime and murder rates while the most religious (Christian USA) has ten times the murder rates of Northern largely secular Europe.

I have done some wrong things in my life. I must live with that guilt. I have no option to erase the relatively few wrongs I have done. My answer was to do charitable things like 3 years in Rwanda 1992 to 1995. Even that does not erase some rowdy actions as a teenager and as a British Army Lieutenant. My good acts and my wrong actions are with me for the rest of my life.

Amergin

 

[bob x]

Sorry, I'm just a bit reserved about revealing everything I know all at once. I prefer my findings to remain somewhat obscure.

What is your purpose here then? To make yourself look like a BS artist?

The Zoroastrian concept is known as Hamastagan "same state." Maybe limbo would be a better translation, but I have seen published sources define it as purgatory, and it was my understanding that the Catholics believe in purgatory while the Protestants don't.

Protestants don't, because there is nothing like it in the scriptures; it was a medieval innovation in Christianity, and so I objected to your characterization of it as part of the core beliefs. According to the Wiki, not always the best source but really about all that I could find at all, "Hamistagan" was likewise a medieval innovation in Zoroastrianism, first appearing in a 9th-century response to Islam.

Of course the symbolism behind the rituals aren't going to be exactly the same.

It isn't that the symbolisms are "not exactly the same"; it's that they have nothing to do with each other whatsoever. Activities like eating, drinking, washing etc. frequently figure in religious rituals because they frequently figure in human life in general. In isolation, that is as unremarkable a commonality as noting that the Bible, like the Avestan, is traditionally written in ink, on paper.

But haoma was an intoxicating substance

So is peyote, which is used ritually in Mexico, and that stuff they ritually snort in the Amazon.

B and was even personified in the Avesta.

Whereas wine is not personified in the Bible.

The Dron was a 'round, sacred unleavened breads made of wheat flour with nine cuts in the middle.'

Communion wafers do not have nine cuts in the middle, and need not be made of wheat. "Round" is the most common shape for a piece of bread, everywhere in the world.

Farvardin means fall in Persian.

In modern Persian, perhaps, due to the calendar drift I mentioned. Anciently it meant the time of "fever" or "fervor" at the end of winter.

Well I figured that it had something to do with the Winter Solstice, but what does the Winter Solstice have to do with God.

It has to do with the SUN. The Winter Solstice is when the sun shines the least, and then starts to "grow"; so in Roman times it was considered the birthday of Sol Invictus, and Christians adopted that as the birthday of Jesus. It is sometimes claimed that Mithraists also called it the birthday of Mithra, which would make some sense if true, but I don't know of any basis for the claim.

Yeah, but the message or gift or Maga : have good thought, word, and deed, was introduced to the Greco-Romans through Christianity.

No, the list of three attributes "good thoughts, good words, good deeds" does not occur in any Greek or Roman source, Christian or otherwise, that I know of. Or, if you are claiming that no Greeks or Romans ever thought that there was a difference between good and bad before Iranians or Christians taught them that: stop being silly.

It sounds very similar to how the Kharena or Halo was described in Zoroastrian tradition.

"1. About the glory of Zartosht becoming manifest even before his birth, it is thus declared, that forty-five years before the time when Zartosht came out to his conference, when Freno gave birth to the mother of Zartosht, whom they called Dukdaub, it came down from the endless light, in the manner of fire, and mingled with the fire which was before her; and from the fire it mingled with the mother of Zartosht. 2. For three nights it was manifest, to all passers-by, as a species of fire in the direction of the house, and passers on the road always saw great radiance. 3. Also when she became fifteen years old, the radiance of that glory which was in her, was even such that, on the path she was walking along, its brightness was then shed by her. - Zadsparm 13.1-3

I don't see a star in the sky, and a brightness shed by a person, as the same kind of thing at all.

According to Geiger Theopompus Philippika bore testimony to Resurrection doctrine of the Magi.

Theopompus of Phillipi (Phillipi was the capital of Macedonia) was a soldier in Alexander's army. I already noted him as the first Greek who actually is on record as having heard of Zoroaster.

And see Zarathushtra in the Gathas and in the Greek and Roman Classics. You might want to try key word searching "Er" for more information on this.

OK, so the fellow in Plato's story is named "Er", not "Zoroaster" or anything like it, and is from Pamphyllia in central Anatolia, not Persia, and while we don't know his ethnicity (pamphyllia means "all-tribes country" because several groups ran into each other there) his father's name "Armenius" sounds no more Iranian than "Er" does (ARMENIAN would be a good guess!); and rather than being an ancient prophet, he was a contemporary soldier, gravely wounded in battle, who lay in a coma for twelve days with everybody assuming he was a goner; upon recovery he reported dreams about another world while he was out, a common phenomenon, see Wizard of Oz (movie, not book, version). Aside from the footnote about Er, the page is devoted to speculating that Herodotus "must have" heard about Zoroaster, despite never saying a word about him, because Xanthus of Lydia supposedly had already mentioned Zoroaster (that, apparently, is just not true) and Herodotus does know a lot of Persian folk-customs, like preferences for particular sacrificial animals and an abhorrence of public urination and cremation of corpses-- all of which, however, are likely to have been Iranian customs long before Zoroaster ever said anything.

Look here Zarathushtra in the Gathas and in the Greek and Roman Classics for the exact title. I can't really find to much on it either.

What I see on that page is how abysmally weak the case is for Pythagoras ever having heard of Zoroaster. He did go to Babylon, after Persians had captured it, so Geiger thinks he "must have" run into Zoroastrians there (the Persians did not, however, as we have discussed at length on the "Curriculum" thread, impose their own religion on conquered places) when he talked to mathematicians and astrologers there; one of them had a name that started with "Z" but Geiger notes, as I can well agree, that this cannot have been Zoroaster (the latest possible dates for Zoroaster are well before Pythagoras) so that the confusion with Zoroaster has to be a late error.

It's some random website. What do you expect

I expect rubbish. I am pleasantly surprised if a random website has some good information, but I need to check the claimed sources before I would quote stuff from a random guy on the Internet. Why do you put weight on garbage sources like this?

but this was L.H. Mill's translation which is not that different from the "raving lunatic."

Yasna 43.16. And Zarathushtra himself, O Ahura, chooses each one of thy holiest Spirit, O Mazda. May Right be embodied full of life and strength!

The original meaning of the sentence does not seem to have been anything like "incarnation"; at least now I can see where the lunatic got his starting point from.

I guess birth of a New Year or Nawruz and resurrection which Easter is all about isn't exactly the same thing

It isn't that New Year's Day and Easter are "not exactly the same"; it's that they have nothing to do with each other whatsoever.

but what is the significance of the full moon, New Moon?

Tracking time by means of the moon is an ancient calendar system. It was considered important that all the communities celebrated at the same time, and this provided synchronization.

{chapter XXI verse} 91. 'Ardvi Sura Anahita answered: "O pure, holy Spitama! this is the sacrifice wherewith thou shalt worship me, this is the sacrifice wherewith thou shalt worship and forward me, from the time when the sun is rising to the time when the sun is setting.
'"Of this libation of mine thou shalt drink, thou who art an Athravan, who hast asked and learnt the revealed law, who art wise, clever, and the Word incarnate. - Aban Yasht

This isn't ancient enough?

I don't know: how old is this? It looks like a very late part of the Avesta, because it has all these references to old stories without telling them (obviously, all the guys who "ask for boons" and are granted them are good guys, and the ones who ask for boons and are not granted them are bad guys, but we don't know what the stories were). Wiki says, for what it's worth, that 'aradvi is the part of the goddess's name that is old Indo-Iranian (cognate to Sanskrit Sarasvati from *Saradvati, Avestan shifting the initial "s" to "h" as usual, and Sanskrit shifting "d" to "s" irregularly) referring to the world-surrounding "river ocean"; while Anahita is an assimilation of the Semitic deity Anath sometime around the reign of Artaxerxes II. This is still a few centuries before the Christian era, but it is not clear that the "Aban Yasht" text was written as soon as the compound deity "Aredvi Anahita Sura" entered the religion.

Obviously I am in error in claiming that "the word incarnate" is not a phrase found in Zoroastrian sources, although I would like to examine the text, and other translations of it, to know whether the translation of that phrase is shaded by Christian interpretation. This source on Anahita (see particularly the paragraph headed "In the Avesta" but all of it is interesting) says that some sections of the Aban Yasht look linguistically very old, almost as old as Gathic, but that others show extensive reworking (masculine instead of feminine pronouns are a give-away that some of the hymns were once addressed to someone other than Anahita).

 

[bob x]

I am not sure why the Proto-Christians used the Jewish scriptures at all.

Because they were all Jews.

This is why the O.T. and N.T. demonstrate two totally different world views and Theologies.

They were Jews who interpreted the OT very differently from the way you do. After all, you don't interpret the OT the same way that bananabrain or dauer or, you know, anyone who is actually Jewish does; and at that time Judaism came in a very wide variety of "flavors" with radically different views.

Zoroastrianism founded by Zarathrusta not a "Zoroaster" as a reform of the Old Iranian religion

As a RADICAL AND THOROUGH REPUDIATION of the Old Iranian religion. Descriptions of "good guys" in the Avesta stereotypically begin "He detested the Devas and followed Ahura Mazda". Your refusal to accept the idea that different religions were, you know, actually different looks silly when you are conflating religions that aren't even similar, but looks downright crazy when you conflate religions which were hostile to each other.

Christian Mythology does have the 12 apostles that correspond to the 12 signs of the Zodiac.

Or to the 12 tribes of Israel. Hint to you: the "Zodiac" is a Middle Eastern, not an Indo-European, concept.

The Father God could be Aed Alainn, Dagda, Dis Pater, Dwyvan, and Cernunnos.

"Aed Alainn"? I cannot find that name anywhere.
Dagda (name somewhat mysterious but perhaps a nursery-word like "daddy") indeed had lots and lots of children. Lug however was not one of them.
Dis Pater is a late borrowing from Greek, in which it was (along with "Hades" and "Pluto") a euphemism for the unspeakable name of the god of death. In Gaul, as in India, the king of the dead is simply the first human, who was also the first to die; he is the father of humans, not of any gods.
Dwyvan is the "Noah" figure who built a boat to get away when the rising seas washed away "Lyonesse" (the land between Brittany and Cornwall, which was above water for a long time when the English Channel was just a little river during the ocean-minimum of the last glaciation).
Cernunnos is the god of rock-piles (to mark paths for travellers) and of mountain goats, cognate with Greek Hermes.

The Son of that God could be Lugh, Lu, Lieu, Lugna and other similar Sun/Son Gods. The Messenger God (equivalent to the Holy Ghost) in Celtic Isles was Lir or Lugus.

Lug, of which most of the names (including the Latinized "Lugus") are just variant spellings, was the Sun God, and the Wolf God, but not the "Son" of any of the "Fathers" you named. Lir was a totally irrelevant god of the sea: do you have some kind of random-deity-name-inserter? "Krishna was the Spanish goddess of wine" or "Thor was the Chinese god of sheep" would make as much sense as some of your identifications.

Indo-European religions had more than three gods as you know.

Indeed. And they had no habit of singling out any set of three as particularly important. You can randomly grab four names and call it a "quaternity" just as easily.

There is the Virgin Mary (equivalent to Celtic Brigit and Danu)

Brigit was a warrior-goddess, particularly responsible for defending fortifications (the root brig is as in the Germanic -burg suffix, now meaning "town" but originally "fortress"). Danu was the goddess of rivers. They are both female, I grant you, which gives them as much in common with Mary as with Cleopatra, Imelda Marcos, or Hilary Clinton.

Oh, you are a Tea Party Republican, programmed to say 'No."

Actually, it is your bizarre insistence that everyone all the way back to Proto-Indo-Europeans has "always" worshipped the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit which is far more reminiscent of Tea Partiers pretending that "the Constitution was entirely derived from the Bible."

The Roman branch of Mithraic Zoroastrianism abandoned the use of Bull's blood and instead made bread wafers in a round disk that was the Solar Disk representing Mithra as the Sun God as well as Son of God.

This is pure fabrication.

That was borrowed by evolving Christianity, as were bishops wearing Mitres.

The "miter" is derived from the head-dress of James the Just, brother of Jesus, who wore a white peaked crown as the next heir to the Davidic royal line. This style of crown goes back very anciently in the Middle East, seen in the "Phrygian cap" of Anatolia, and Hittite images, and one half of the Pharaoh's "double crown" (white peaked, for Lower Egypt; red circlet with sacred snake for Upper Egypt). It has nothing whatsoever to do with Persia in general, or Mithraism in particular.

 

[mojobadshah]

What is your purpose here then? To make yourself look like a BS artist?

Na, I just don't want to be posting a book on here.

Protestants don't, because there is nothing like it in the scriptures; it was a medieval innovation in Christianity, and so I objected to your characterization of it as part of the core beliefs. According to the Wiki, not always the best source but really about all that I could find at all, "Hamistagan" was likewise a medieval innovation in Zoroastrianism, first appearing in a 9th-century response to Islam.

Yeah, it's a Zoroastrian concept all the same. Is it not a Christian concept as well? Should I just confine it to "Catholic concept"?

It isn't that the symbolisms are "not exactly the same"; it's that they have nothing to do with each other whatsoever. Activities like eating, drinking, washing etc. frequently figure in religious rituals because they frequently figure in human life in general. In isolation, that is as unremarkable a commonality as noting that the Bible, like the Avestan, is traditionally written in ink, on paper.

So is peyote, which is used ritually in Mexico, and that stuff they ritually snort in the Amazon.

Whereas wine is not personified in the Bible.

Let me put it this way the Haoma was the plant of immortality which was personified like Jesus was a person, and the Zoroastrians ingest the Haoma-juice in the same way that Christians ingest wine, to share Christ's immortality.

Communion wafers do not have nine cuts in the middle, and need not be made of wheat. "Round" is the most common shape for a piece of bread, everywhere in the world.

Sure, but this was a liturgical practice among the Zoroastrians.

In modern Persian, perhaps, due to the calendar drift I mentioned. Anciently it meant the time of "fever" or "fervor" at the end of winter.

Yeah, that was interesting, but the symbolism behind Farvardinigan and All Souls Day is very similar. And how is it that Farvardin and All Souls Day ended up falling around the same time of year today?

By the way I thought of a reason why the Zoroastrians might have reintroduced Mithra into the religion. But I'm not quite clear on the whole calendar shift thing. Anyhow, Mithragran, obviously derived from Mithra is celebrated in the fall when fire or Mehr also akin to Mithra, is important because the nights are longer than the days during the fall.

It has to do with the SUN. The Winter Solstice is when the sun shines the least, and then starts to "grow"; so in Roman times it was considered the birthday of Sol Invictus, and Christians adopted that as the birthday of Jesus. It is sometimes claimed that Mithraists also called it the birthday of Mithra, which would make some sense if true, but I don't know of any basis for the claim.

Yeah I understand that Sol means sun and Invictus means unconquered, but where does the God part come in?

No, the list of three attributes "good thoughts, good words, good deeds" does not occur in any Greek or Roman source, Christian or otherwise, that I know of. Or, if you are claiming that no Greeks or Romans ever thought that there was a difference between good and bad before Iranians or Christians taught them that: stop being silly.

I'm claiming that the ethical and moral system of their cultural heritage was nothing like that of the Zoroastrian ethical and moral system, at least in theory. Their God's were F'd up.

Theopompus of Phillipi (Phillipi was the capital of Macedonia) was a soldier in Alexander's army. I already noted him as the first Greek who actually is on record as having heard of Zoroaster.

OK, so the fellow in Plato's story is named "Er", not "Zoroaster" or anything like it, and is from Pamphyllia in central Anatolia, not Persia, and while we don't know his ethnicity (pamphyllia means "all-tribes country" because several groups ran into each other there) his father's name "Armenius" sounds no more Iranian than "Er" does (ARMENIAN would be a good guess!); and rather than being an ancient prophet, he was a contemporary soldier, gravely wounded in battle, who lay in a coma for twelve days with everybody assuming he was a goner; upon recovery he reported dreams about another world while he was out, a common phenomenon, see Wizard of Oz (movie, not book, version). Aside from the footnote about Er, the page is devoted to speculating that Herodotus "must have" heard about Zoroaster, despite never saying a word about him, because Xanthus of Lydia supposedly had already mentioned Zoroaster (that, apparently, is just not true) and Herodotus does know a lot of Persian folk-customs, like preferences for particular sacrificial animals and an abhorrence of public urination and cremation of corpses-- all of which, however, are likely to have been Iranian customs long before Zoroaster ever said anything.

Isn't Geiger saying that Er was Zoroaster? Wasn't there a Pamphyllian Zoroaster?

What I see on that page is how abysmally weak the case is for Pythagoras ever having heard of Zoroaster. He did go to Babylon, after Persians had captured it, so Geiger thinks he "must have" run into Zoroastrians there (the Persians did not, however, as we have discussed at length on the "Curriculum" thread, impose their own religion on conquered places) when he talked to mathematicians and astrologers there; one of them had a name that started with "Z" but Geiger notes, as I can well agree, that this cannot have been Zoroaster (the latest possible dates for Zoroaster are well before Pythagoras) so that the confusion with Zoroaster has to be a late error.

What about Zalmoxis? Zalmoxis' ideology sounds like a combination of Zoroaster's ideology and the story of Yima.

I expect rubbish. I am pleasantly surprised if a random website has some good information, but I need to check the claimed sources before I would quote stuff from a random guy on the Internet. Why do you put weight on garbage sources like this?

The original meaning of the sentence does not seem to have been anything like "incarnation"; at least now I can see where the lunatic got his starting point from.

I don't have a problem with "incarnation." Mills says "may Right be embodied full of life." Not a big difference. Was L.H. Mills was a lunatic? What translation of the Zoroastrian texts would you recommend and why?

It isn't that New Year's Day and Easter are "not exactly the same"; it's that they have nothing to do with each other whatsoever.

Tracking time by means of the moon is an ancient calendar system. It was considered important that all the communities celebrated at the same time, and this provided synchronization.

New Year could be interpreted as the resurrection of the Year. The Vernal Equinox, the day the days began to grow longer than night or is victorious over the night. And a full moon is like the resurrection of the moon or when the moon is full of life, something along those lines. Wouldn't that make sense to align these astronomical events with the resurrection of a God?

I don't know: how old is this? It looks like a very late part of the Avesta, because it has all these references to old stories without telling them (obviously, all the guys who "ask for boons" and are granted them are good guys, and the ones who ask for boons and are not granted them are bad guys, but we don't know what the stories were). Wiki says, for what it's worth, that 'aradvi is the part of the goddess's name that is old Indo-Iranian (cognate to Sanskrit Sarasvati from *Saradvati, Avestan shifting the initial "s" to "h" as usual, and Sanskrit shifting "d" to "s" irregularly) referring to the world-surrounding "river ocean"; while Anahita is an assimilation of the Semitic deity Anath sometime around the reign of Artaxerxes II. This is still a few centuries before the Christian era, but it is not clear that the "Aban Yasht" text was written as soon as the compound deity "Aredvi Anahita Sura" entered the religion.

Obviously I am in error in claiming that "the word incarnate" is not a phrase found in Zoroastrian sources, although I would like to examine the text, and other translations of it, to know whether the translation of that phrase is shaded by Christian interpretation. This source on Anahita (see particularly the paragraph headed "In the Avesta" but all of it is interesting) says that some sections of the Aban Yasht look linguistically very old, almost as old as Gathic, but that others show extensive reworking (masculine instead of feminine pronouns are a give-away that some of the hymns were once addressed to someone other than Anahita).

Rober Graves says the Semitic which I assume would be the Babylonian "Anu" was a masculinization of the Sumerian Goddess "Anna-Nin" and Anu's wife was "Anatu."

 

[abena]

love is god-god is love

 

[bob x]

Na, I just don't want to be posting a book on here.

I am just asking for basic courtesy. Sentences to the effect of "somebody whose name I won't tell you said something that I am only willing to describe vaguely" are not at all helpful, when speaking clearly would not take up any more space.

Yeah, it's a Zoroastrian concept all the same. Is it not a Christian concept as well? Should I just confine it to "Catholic concept"?

Yes, since the Greek Orthodox reject the concept also. You were claiming it was a core concept of Christianity, which was found in Zoroastrianism first; neither is true. In both cases it is a late elaboration, peripheral to and in the view of some not terribly consistent with the core beliefs, and it would be difficult to say which medieval group copied from which, but more likely these were independent developments not influencing each other at all.

Let me put it this way the Haoma was the plant of immortality which was personified like Jesus was a person, and the Zoroastrians ingest the Haoma-juice in the same way that Christians ingest wine, to share Christ's immortality.

Wine is not a person, and Haoma was never described as anyone's blood, nor is the purpose of the Eucharist what you say. You are distorting both rituals to make them "the same" when there is really not much in common.

Sure, but this was a liturgical practice among the Zoroastrians.

SO??? I am not impressed by the insight that Zoroastrians, just like Christians, and just like Confucians or Jivaroan headhunters for that matter, ate food. If the "nine cuts" was a specific detailed sharing, or if the ritual purposes had anything in common, I could see some point here. But so far all I see in common is that flatbread is often cooked in a round shape.

Yeah, that was interesting, but the symbolism behind Farvardinigan and All Souls Day is very similar.

Not even slightly. The ancient Farvar was the Festival of Fools, a time of condoned rule-breaking. This has a lot in common with Roman Februalia when the men ran around naked and tried to flick the women with little thongs-- and that is because the two are Indo-European cognates. It also has a lot in common with Hebrew Purim when everybody gets very drunk and wears masks so they can pretend not to be responsible-- and that is because the Hebrew was earlier Perwarim and is clearly a borrowing. I see nothing whatsoever in common with All Soul's Day, and if you are going to claim there is something in common, then tell me what you are referring to.

And how is it that Farvardin and All Souls Day ended up falling around the same time of year today?

The Persian calendar drifted because the 1/4 day was omitted for centuries. And late August is not "around the same time" as the beginning of November, as I would use the words.

By the way I thought of a reason why the Zoroastrians might have reintroduced Mithra into the religion.

If you could not be bothered to say what your thought is, there is no point in writing this sentence, now is there?

But I'm not quite clear on the whole calendar shift thing.

Then tell me what you are unclear about. I didn't think it was very complicated to understand. If every calendar year is 365 days exactly, then every four years the solstices and equinoxes are going to shift by one day on the calendar, because the real interval is more like 365 1/4 days. After 400 years, then, the calendar dates are almost 100 days off from the previous seasonal alignment. The Persian calendar was allowed to drift for almost twice that long.

Yeah I understand that Sol means sun and Invictus means unconquered, but where does the God part come in?

Sol Invictus was a Roman god (artificially created by the emperors). But if you are asking where the "Universal God" comes into it: it doesn't; not at all.

I'm claiming that the ethical and moral system of their cultural heritage was nothing like that of the Zoroastrian ethical and moral system, at least in theory. Their God's were F'd up.

Which is why their philosophers started from scratch and why Hebrew traditions were of interest. The point is, the post-Christian ethical system wasn't particularly like the Zoroastrian one either; the heaven/hell concept was clearly a borrowing, but the specifics about what would send you to one or the other destination did not travel.

Isn't Geiger saying that Er was Zoroaster?

Not that I see, no. If he was saying that, I'd like to know why.

Wasn't there a Pamphyllian Zoroaster?

Not that I've ever heard of. What are you talking about?

What about Zalmoxis? Zalmoxis' ideology sounds like a combination of Zoroaster's ideology and the story of Yima.

Here is another excellent place for you to indicate what you are talking about. I had never heard of "Zalmoxis" before. What I find by Googling the name is a particularly garbled story in Herodotus, with discrepancies among the manuscripts along with the usual difficulty in separating out propaganda and gossip from the underlying facts, talking about how the "Getae" (a genuine ethnic group, but not one which is well known) had a ritual of human sacrifice to send a "message" to the other world, along with Herodotus' usual bogus claims that they must have learned everything from the Greeks; the only support from other ancient sources is that one of the kings of the Getae had a somewhat similar name, probably derived from the name of their god. The only "ideology of Zalmoxis" I can find anything about is 20th-century fabrications by Rumanian chauvinists, who want to claim that the Getae were Thracians or Dacians; a 6th-century Gothic chauvinist wanted to claim that they were Goths (to give Goths more anciency). All we have is this one name from the Getae: if the correct spelling of the root is the *zamlo found in some manuscripts, that is like Russian zemlya "earth" and quite specifically Slavic; if *zalmo as seems more likely, it is like the "helmet" root we have seen before, and definitely of the S'atam branch (not Germanic in which the first consonant shifted to "h") but certainly not Iranian (where that root had an irregular l-to-r shift).

I don't have a problem with "incarnation." Mills says "may Right be embodied full of life." Not a big difference.

A big difference from what other translators see the sentence as saying.

Was L.H. Mills was a lunatic?

Probably a Christian.

What translation of the Zoroastrian texts would you recommend and why?

If you cannot master the original language, compare as many translations as you can, and never rely on what only one translation says if it does not seem similar to any others.

New Year could be interpreted as the resurrection of the Year.

But... does anybody actually do that?

And a full moon is like the resurrection of the moon

No, that would be the first-visible-crescent phase.

Wouldn't that make sense to align these astronomical events with the resurrection of a God?

No more than, say, the visible crescent following the winter solstice.
I believe the resurrection of Jesus is celebrated on the Sunday after the full-moon holiday after the spring equinox because: that is when the events actually happened. Is that too simple for you?

Rober Graves says the Semitic which I assume would be the Babylonian "Anu" was a masculinization of the Sumerian Goddess "Anna-Nin" and Anu's wife was "Anatu."

Anu is Sumerian, and did not survive into Babylonian. Inanna was the love-goddess (I assume that's who you mean by "Anna-Nin") who became identified with the Semitic Ishtar or Astarte, a very different goddess from Anath (Astarte had lovers all the time; Anath was virginal and pure). The source might indeed be Semitic feminine ending -at or -atu or -ath tacked on to the Sumerian "Anu" at some point.

 

[mojobadshah]

I am just asking for basic courtesy. Sentences to the effect of "somebody whose name I won't tell you said something that I am only willing to describe vaguely" are not at all helpful, when speaking clearly would not take up any more space.

I'll try my best.

Yes, since the Greek Orthodox reject the concept also. You were claiming it was a core concept of Christianity, which was found in Zoroastrianism first; neither is true. In both cases it is a late elaboration, peripheral to and in the view of some not terribly consistent with the core beliefs, and it would be difficult to say which medieval group copied from which, but more likely these were independent developments not influencing each other at all.

Paul Kriwaczek in "In Search of Zarathushtra" says Zoroastrianism was the influence.

Wine is not a person, and Haoma was never described as anyone's blood, nor is the purpose of the Eucharist what you say. You are distorting both rituals to make them "the same" when there is really not much in common.

Neither is Haoma-juice a person. I'm not saying their "the same." I'm saying they're similar, but one predated the other. You mean drinking the blood didn't have anything to do with sharing Jesus' immortality? Why have I heard that before? It's on the net too. Wasn't there some connection between Jesus and the Tree of Life also? The Haoma was also the Tree of Life.

SO??? I am not impressed by the insight that Zoroastrians, just like Christians, and just like Confucians or Jivaroan headhunters for that matter, ate food. If the "nine cuts" was a specific detailed sharing, or if the ritual purposes had anything in common, I could see some point here. But so far all I see in common is that flatbread is often cooked in a round shape.

You make it sound like its a regular meal. That's not what I said at all. Do people eat wafers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner regularly?

Not even slightly. The ancient Farvar was the Festival of Fools, a time of condoned rule-breaking. This has a lot in common with Roman Februalia when the men ran around naked and tried to flick the women with little thongs-- and that is because the two are Indo-European cognates. It also has a lot in common with Hebrew Purim when everybody gets very drunk and wears masks so they can pretend not to be responsible-- and that is because the Hebrew was earlier Perwarim and is clearly a borrowing. I see nothing whatsoever in common with All Soul's Day, and if you are going to claim there is something in common, then tell me what you are referring to.

However what you're describing sounds more like Mardi Gras which apparently has a Persian connection. It's when the Emperor would permit his servants to switch roles. This site Queen Esther and Purim discusses it, but is in denial that Esther or any of these events even took place.

Farvardinigan, regardless of when it fell back in the day, is observed in September today and like All Souls Day is a memorial to the departed according to "The Zoroastrian Faith" by S.A. Nigosian

If you could not be bothered to say what your thought is, there is no point in writing this sentence, now is there?

Oh, I thought I did, must have gotten deleted. What I was going to say was that Mithrigan, akin to Mithra, is celebrated in October when Mihr "fire," akin to the name, Mithra is important because it's a dark time of the year.

Sol Invictus was a Roman god (artificially created by the emperors). But if you are asking where the "Universal God" comes into it: it doesn't; not at all.

But "Sol Invictus" means "Sun [that is] Unconquered" not "The Unconquered Sun God." I'm pretty sure it was called Deo Soli Invictus too. When did that phraseology come into use? Nevertheless Dae Mah means "month of the Creator." Dae must be akin to Deo. Did it ever fall on December after the incorporation of the original Zoroastrian calendar? When? Why would December 25 fall on Dae Mah today? Maybe there is a connection that is being overlooked here.

Which is why their philosophers started from scratch and why Hebrew traditions were of interest. The point is, the post-Christian ethical system wasn't particularly like the Zoroastrian one either; the heaven/hell concept was clearly a borrowing, but the specifics about what would send you to one or the other destination did not travel.

Their philosophers like Socrates were charged with impiety, some were exiled, some even murdered and their philosophies were rejected by the majority of society. My point was that Zoroastrianism and Christianity encouraged people to be good. Greco-Roman Paganism did not.

Not that I see, no. If he was saying that, I'd like to know why.

Not that I've ever heard of. What are you talking about?

It remains to mention the only instance where Zoroaster’s postulated authorship was contentious. His work On Nature opens with the words: “These things I wrote, I, Zoroaster son of Armenios, a Pamphylian by race, who died in war, whatever I learnt from the gods, while I was in Hades” (for sources, etc., Beck, pp. 518 f., 528-30). This looks like, and probably is, a case of outrageous plagiarism; for the opening words are the same as Plato’s at the start of the great “Myth of Er” which concludes the Republic — with the substitution of Zoroaster’s name for Er’s. Certainly, the plagiarist was not Plato. However, in pseudo-Zoroaster’s defence, it is not impossible that Plato, who is quite credibly said to have had connections with the magi (Kingsley, 1995, pp. 199-207), may in turn have drawn on an earlier Iranian story of an other-worldly journey undertaken by Zoroaster or some other magus (Bivar, pp. 86 f.). Zoroaster as Perceived by the Greeks

Here is another excellent place for you to indicate what you are talking about. I had never heard of "Zalmoxis" before. What I find by Googling the name is a particularly garbled story in Herodotus, with discrepancies among the manuscripts along with the usual difficulty in separating out propaganda and gossip from the underlying facts, talking about how the "Getae" (a genuine ethnic group, but not one which is well known) had a ritual of human sacrifice to send a "message" to the other world, along with Herodotus' usual bogus claims that they must have learned everything from the Greeks; the only support from other ancient sources is that one of the kings of the Getae had a somewhat similar name, probably derived from the name of their god. The only "ideology of Zalmoxis" I can find anything about is 20th-century fabrications by Rumanian chauvinists, who want to claim that the Getae were Thracians or Dacians; a 6th-century Gothic chauvinist wanted to claim that they were Goths (to give Goths more anciency). All we have is this one name from the Getae: if the correct spelling of the root is the *zamlo found in some manuscripts, that is like Russian zemlya "earth" and quite specifically Slavic; if *zalmo as seems more likely, it is like the "helmet" root we have seen before, and definitely of the S'atam branch (not Germanic in which the first consonant shifted to "h") but certainly not Iranian (where that root had an irregular l-to-r shift).

Well most of the information I got on Zalmoxis come from wikipedia. It looks like different information now. But I recall that like Zoroaster Zalmoxis professed Salvation, and like Yima Zalmoxis built an underground enclosure. Where Jesus's resurrection took 3 days Zalmoxis spent 3 years in this enclosure. People thought he was dead, and then he would reappear, and this is how he brought people over to his religion.

A big difference from what other translators see the sentence as saying.

Probably a Christian.

If you cannot master the original language, compare as many translations as you can, and never rely on what only one translation says if it does not seem similar to any others.

Yasna 43.16 at ahurâ hvô mainyûm zarathushtrô vereñtê mazdâ ýastê cishcâ spênishtô astvat ashem h'yât ushtânâ aojôñghvat hvêñg daresôi xshathrôi h'yât ârmaitish ashîm shyaothanâish vohû daidît mananghâ!

Well from what I can understand the words spênishtô "Spirit" ashem "order" and ushtânâ "body?" are really close together here.

But... does anybody actually do that?

No, that would be the first-visible-crescent phase.

No more than, say, the visible crescent following the winter solstice.
I believe the resurrection of Jesus is celebrated on the Sunday after the full-moon holiday after the spring equinox because: that is when the events actually happened. Is that too simple for you?

My question to you would be what the heck does the Full Moon have to do with Jesus?

Anu is Sumerian, and did not survive into Babylonian. Inanna was the love-goddess (I assume that's who you mean by "Anna-Nin") who became identified with the Semitic Ishtar or Astarte, a very different goddess from Anath (Astarte had lovers all the time; Anath was virginal and pure). The source might indeed be Semitic feminine ending -at or -atu or -ath tacked on to the Sumerian "Anu" at some point.

Is it conventional that Anath developed into Anahita?

 

[bob x]

Paul Kriwaczek in "In Search of Zarathushtra" says Zoroastrianism was the influence.

Does he give a reason for thinking so? Medieval Zoroastrians were separated from medieval Christendom by the Byzantine and Islamic areas, where no concept of "purgatory" or "limbo" ever existed, so it is hard to see how it could have gotten from one to the other. Or does he claim that Hemistagan was a concept in ancient Zoroastrianism?

Neither is Haoma-juice a person.

Sigh... the reason you were claiming any similarity is because Haoma WAS personified, or so you were saying, I don't know-- I know "Soma" is spoken of as a personal deity in the Vedas, so I thought maybe it was similar in the Avesta.

You mean drinking the blood didn't have anything to do with sharing Jesus' immortality?

Only in the vague sense that the whole Christian religion does. But here you are basically saying that every Christian ritual is the same as every other. The point of the Communion ritual is to a) bring to mind the sacrifice of Jesus, that his body was torn and his blood spilled, and b) to bind all the members into one community.

Wasn't there some connection between Jesus and the Tree of Life also?

Maybe in some poetry. Not in any scripture or liturgy.

The Haoma was also the Tree of Life.

The Haoma was a mushroom.

You make it sound like its a regular meal. That's not what I said at all. Do people eat wafers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner regularly?

The Dron WAS a regular meal, or a first course to one: a flatbread cake large enough to require steam vents to be slit in the middle for baking, with a specific requirement that there be nine of them, for whatever reason ("9" sometimes occurs as a holy number in Greco-Roman paganism, but never in Christianity), and there is a requirement that wheat flour be used: wheat is most common in Eucharist wafers, just because wheat is common, but there is no rule about it. The only rule about the Eucharist is that the pieces of bread must be SMALL, originally bread torn into little bits, because the ritual purpose is to remind everybody that the body of Jesus was broken-- where the purpose of the Dron was to give thanks for the gift of food.

However what you're describing sounds more like Mardi Gras which apparently has a Persian connection.

NO. The Carnival season has a ROMAN connection. There is resemblance between the Roman Februalia and the ancient Persian Fervar because they go back to a common Indo-European source, not because either was borrowed from the other.

It's when the Emperor would permit his servants to switch roles. This site Queen Esther and Purim discusses it, but is in denial that Esther or any of these events even took place.

The book of Esther is a late piece of fiction to "explain" the holiday.

Farvardinigan, regardless of when it fell back in the day, is observed in September today and like All Souls Day is a memorial to the departed according to "The Zoroastrian Faith" by S.A. Nigosian

It may have changed its nature as it changed in seasonal position, but if there is any borrowing of the "All Souls Day" idea, it is obviously in the reverse direction from what you are claiming.

But "Sol Invictus" means "Sun [that is] Unconquered" not "The Unconquered Sun God." I'm pretty sure it was called Deo Soli Invictus too.

Yeah, if you needed to mention that you were talking about the "god" of that name, you would add the word for "God".

When did that phraseology come into use? Nevertheless Dae Mah means "month of the Creator." Dae must be akin to Deo.

Yes.

Did it ever fall on December after the incorporation of the original Zoroastrian calendar? When? Why would December 25 fall on Dae Mah today?

It was a random 1 out of 12 chance what month name would end up where after the calendar was allowed to drift all around and got fixed sometime.

Their philosophers like Socrates were charged with impiety, some were exiled, some even murdered and their philosophies were rejected by the majority of society.

That's what happens when you speak painful truths about the bad ideas on which a powerful establishment depends. That is why Jesus got killed too. Zoroaster did not end up killed, although he was often threatened.

My point was that Zoroastrianism and Christianity encouraged people to be good.

They had little particular agreement about what "good" meant, however.

Greco-Roman Paganism did not.

The Greco-Roman gods were the equivalents, in some cases the cognates, of the "Daevas" that Zoroaster despised, and similar in nature to the "Ba'alim" of the Middle East which the Hebrew prophets railed against.

It remains to mention the only instance where Zoroaster’s postulated authorship was contentious. His work On Nature opens with the words: “These things I wrote, I, Zoroaster son of Armenios, a Pamphylian by race, who died in war, whatever I learnt from the gods, while I was in Hades” (for sources, etc., Beck, pp. 518 f., 528-30). This looks like, and probably is, a case of outrageous plagiarism; for the opening words are the same as Plato’s at the start of the great “Myth of Er” which concludes the Republic — with the substitution of Zoroaster’s name for Er’s. Certainly, the plagiarist was not Plato.

Obviously not. What we find in your source is that nobody in Greece knew anything about Zoroaster until a couple authors in the generations after Alexander, and then we get a dozen or so authors in Roman or Byzantine times who claim to know about him, but have horribly garbled information.

The phrase "I, a Pamphyllian by race" is particularly a dead give-away that this author is exceedingly late. Pamphyllia, as I said before, meant "all tribes country": there was no such thing as a "Pamphyllian race", rather it was the area where Armenian, Phrygian, Gordian, Lydian, Cimmerian etc. ethnicities could all be found.

However, in pseudo-Zoroaster’s defence, it is not impossible that Plato, who is quite credibly said to have had connections with the magi (Kingsley, 1995, pp. 199-207), may in turn have drawn on an earlier Iranian story of an other-worldly journey undertaken by Zoroaster or some other magus (Bivar, pp. 86 f.). Zoroaster as Perceived by the Greeks

The only "connection" with Plato is that he would have liked to travel east, but never made it. Taking Plato's story at face value, as being about a contemporary soldier who had a rather typical near-death experience during a lengthy coma, makes perfect sense and requires no further explanation.

Well most of the information I got on Zalmoxis come from wikipedia. It looks like different information now. But I recall that like Zoroaster Zalmoxis professed Salvation, and like Yima Zalmoxis built an underground enclosure. Where Jesus's resurrection took 3 days Zalmoxis spent 3 years in this enclosure. People thought he was dead, and then he would reappear, and this is how he brought people over to his religion.

That appears to be 20th-century fabrication. The story in Herodotus is just very crude.

Yasna 43.16 at ahurâ hvô mainyûm zarathushtrô vereñtê mazdâ ýastê cishcâ spênishtô astvat ashem h'yât ushtânâ aojôñghvat hvêñg daresôi xshathrôi h'yât ârmaitish ashîm shyaothanâish vohû daidît mananghâ!

Avestan is not one of my languages, but I'll see what I can do. Thanks for finding the text.

My question to you would be what the heck does the Full Moon have to do with Jesus?

The holiday was at the Full Moon, like most holidays in the ancient world, for synchronization purposes. Jesus came to Jerusalem in the days before the holiday, and was killed for the basic crime of speaking truth to power.

Is it conventional that Anath developed into Anahita?

The images are the same. The very idea of making images at all was heretical within Zoroastrianism, as within Judaism, until Artaxerxes II.

 

[mojobadshah]

Only in the vague sense that the whole Christian religion does. But here you are basically saying that every Christian ritual is the same as every other. The point of the Communion ritual is to a) bring to mind the sacrifice of Jesus, that his body was torn and his blood spilled, and b) to bind all the members into one community.

Maybe in some poetry. Not in any scripture or liturgy.

Thomas said the portrayal of Jesus crucified to a tree instead of a cross "seems to be from Peter, although Paul uses it, and as such it represents an esoteric teaching, correlative with the tree in the Garden of Eden."

The Haoma was a mushroom.

It may have been a mushroom, maybe of the Anahita Muscaria type, because the Haoma is described as the golden eyed one, but also white one and green one. So he could have been a plant. Today they use ephedra. But Haoma or Hom sounds awfully close to Hemp which is rooted in the word Cannabis and which the Scythians are known to have used. But the Avesta already has a name for Cannabis, Bangha.

The Dron WAS a regular meal, or a first course to one: a flatbread cake large enough to require steam vents to be slit in the middle for baking, with a specific requirement that there be nine of them, for whatever reason ("9" sometimes occurs as a holy number in Greco-Roman paganism, but never in Christianity), and there is a requirement that wheat flour be used: wheat is most common in Eucharist wafers, just because wheat is common, but there is no rule about it. The only rule about the Eucharist is that the pieces of bread must be SMALL, originally bread torn into little bits, because the ritual purpose is to remind everybody that the body of Jesus was broken-- where the purpose of the Dron was to give thanks for the gift of food.

So what makes the passover meal an antecedent of the Last Supper or Eucharist?

The book of Esther is a late piece of fiction to "explain" the holiday.

So where did Mardi Gras originate?

It may have changed its nature as it changed in seasonal position, but if there is any borrowing of the "All Souls Day" idea, it is obviously in the reverse direction from what you are claiming.

Why would it be in the reverse direction? It celebrates the departed souls or Fravashis in this case. The soul is a Zoroastrian concept.

Yeah, if you needed to mention that you were talking about the "god" of that name, you would add the word for "God".

Yes.

It was a random 1 out of 12 chance what month name would end up where after the calendar was allowed to drift all around and got fixed sometime.

And the Winter Solstice probably did fall on Dae Mah at one point and that's where the Cult of Deo Soli Invictus and Mithraists got 25 from and that's the date the Church assigned the birth of Jesus.

That's what happens when you speak painful truths about the bad ideas on which a powerful establishment depends. That is why Jesus got killed too. Zoroaster did not end up killed, although he was often threatened.

They had little particular agreement about what "good" meant, however.

The Greco-Roman gods were the equivalents, in some cases the cognates, of the "Daevas" that Zoroaster despised, and similar in nature to the "Ba'alim" of the Middle East which the Hebrew prophets railed against.

They did have an agreement about what "good" meant. It meant things like loving, forgiving, true, just, honest, charitable, as opposed to deceiving, and merciless, and murdering, and rapist.

The holiday was at the Full Moon, like most holidays in the ancient world, for synchronization purposes. Jesus came to Jerusalem in the days before the holiday, and was killed for the basic crime of speaking truth to power.

Let's say Jesus didn't really come to Jerusalem in the days before the holiday. Why would someone want to affix a resurrection [on a day] after the full moon? I guess you've kind of answered this already, for synchronization purposes. But why would it be important that the lunar and solar calendars are sychronized in such a way?

 

[bob x]

Thomas said the portrayal of Jesus crucified to a tree instead of a cross "seems to be from Peter, although Paul uses it, and as such it represents an esoteric teaching, correlative with the tree in the Garden of Eden."

The cross that killed him would be correlative to the tree of good and evil, from which sin originated-- not the tree of life, the other one.

It may have been a mushroom, maybe of the Anahita Muscaria type, because the Haoma is described as the golden eyed one, but also white one and green one. So he could have been a plant. Today they use ephedra.

It's most definitely not a "tree" of any kind, for sure. (The genus is Amanita muscaria, not "Anahita" although I can see how you would make that typo.)

But Haoma or Hom sounds awfully close to Hemp which is rooted in the word Cannabis and which the Scythians are known to have used. But the Avesta already has a name for Cannabis, Bangha.

The root, as you say, is *kannab, and English hemp only has an "m" because the second syllable collapsed and "nb" naturally changes to "mb"; the initial "h" is from the usual k-to-h shift in Germanic (as Gothic khont, English hundred instead of kentum or s'atam). In Indo-Iranian it would become *s'anab except that, as you point out, Indo-Iranian used a different root entirely.

So what makes the passover meal an antecedent of the Last Supper or Eucharist?

They were both for ritual purposes of remembrance; and the passover supper involved the sacrifice of a lamb, which came to be taken as symbolic of innocence.

So where did Mardi Gras originate?

In the Christian calendar, the 40 days of self-denial called "Lent" are supposed to be derived from the 40 days Jesus spent meditating in the wilderness; but in reality, being conservative with the food supplies in late winter was a pragmatic custom in Europe, analogous to conservation of food supplies in early summer in the Middle East. The last days before Lent starts are called "Carnival" from Latin carne vale "Goodbye, flesh!" and are a last chance for self-indulgence; the particular customs associated with Mardi Gras, however, have their antecedents in the Roman Februalia.

Why would it be in the reverse direction?

Because it is late medieval in Zoroastrianism. The ancient timing, and nature, of Farvar was Februalian.

It celebrates the departed souls or Fravashis in this case. The soul is a Zoroastrian concept.

You think nobody ever thought about such things until Iranians taught them how???

And the Winter Solstice probably did fall on Dae Mah at one point

Dae Mah is a MONTH, not a particular day.

and that's where the Cult of Deo Soli Invictus and Mithraists got 25 from and that's the date the Church assigned the birth of Jesus.

Dae Mah did not shift to December until the 10th or 11th century AD.

They did have an agreement about what "good" meant. It meant things like loving, forgiving, true, just, honest, charitable, as opposed to deceiving, and merciless, and murdering, and rapist.

You think nobody ever preferred love and honesty to violence and deceit until Iranians taught them how??? Here you are talking about very generic ethics such as you would find in, say, Chinese or Mexican cultures as well. On less generic questions, Zoroastrianism celebrated while Christianity despised bodily pleasures; Zoroastrianism honored the rich and powerful, Christianity the poor and weak.

Let's say Jesus didn't really come to Jerusalem in the days before the holiday. Why would someone want to affix a resurrection [on a day] after the full moon?

No reason I can think of, except that IT HAPPENED THAT WAY. If you assume it didn't (sort of like "Let's say Zoroaster never existed... Why would someone invent him?") then you have a problem. I don't have a problem.

I guess you've kind of answered this already, for synchronization purposes. But why would it be important that the lunar and solar calendars are sychronized in such a way?

The moon is useful for synchronization because everybody can see it. It's no more complicated than that.

 

[mojobadshah]

The cross that killed him would be correlative to the tree of good and evil, from which sin originated-- not the tree of life, the other one.

"According to some scholars, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, portrayed in various religions and philosophies, are the same tree." - Tree_of_life

It's most definitely not a "tree" of any kind, for sure. (The genus is Amanita muscaria, not "Anahita" although I can see how you would make that typo.)

The root, as you say, is *kannab, and English hemp only has an "m" because the second syllable collapsed and "nb" naturally changes to "mb"; the initial "h" is from the usual k-to-h shift in Germanic (as Gothic khont, English hundred instead of kentum or s'atam). In Indo-Iranian it would become *s'anab except that, as you point out, Indo-Iranian used a different root entirely.

It's actually kannab in New Persian. But are you saying this is the root of Av. haoma too? What IE. words is Av. haoma related to?

You think nobody ever preferred love and honesty to violence and deceit until Iranians taught them how??? Here you are talking about very generic ethics such as you would find in, say, Chinese or Mexican cultures as well. On less generic questions, Zoroastrianism celebrated while Christianity despised bodily pleasures; Zoroastrianism honored the rich and powerful, Christianity the poor and weak.

I'm saying that Greco-Roman mythology did not teach people to be loving, forgiving, honest, true, charitable, but Zoroastrianism did, and this rubbed off on the Jews who established Christianity.

 

[Lunitik]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmCS7P-vdRM

This discusses rationally what the Wise Men represented, and also discusses the correlations between the lost years and this truth. Consider that the Wise Men are said to come from the East, and also that there is no evidence whatsoever that Jesus even existed between the ages of 14 and 29 except these texts.

Of course, if this is true, then it shows Jesus to be a bad student when we consider the incident in the Temple - he has fashioned a whip and is beating the animals and people who are in the Temple, he is destroying another persons property when he is toppling the tables and ordering the birds out of the Temple. Clearly doves cannot signify the Holy Spirit, for even these are ordered out of the Temple. Overall, this scene is disgusting when viewed from a Buddhist perspective.

If Jesus is the incarnation of God, despite these actions, then certainly the statements Buddha makes about Brahma must apply to the God of the desert also.

God in Buddhism

 

[Amergin]

Because they were all Jews.

They were Jews who interpreted the OT very differently from the way you do. After all, you don't interpret the OT the same way that bananabrain or dauer or, you know, anyone who is actually Jewish does; and at that time Judaism came in a very wide variety of "flavors" with radically different views.

No, the reason is that the many Jesus Cults attracted a motly band of pagan converts who mixed with Hellenised Jews. These pagan converts were exposed to Jewish scriptures. When Jesus was deified by the Pagan converts to a secondary subordinate God, Jewish scripture was edited and selected out to establish an "ancient" basis for the new religion. They needed some writings to justify the deification of Jesus. When the more Paganised proto-Christians elevated the subordinate God Jesus into the High God they had to side-step the Jewish manuscripts while keeping them for posterity. The deification of Jesus into the High God conflicted with Yahweh and with whatever being impregnated the Virgin Mary. That led Tertullian to invent the Trinity. Ever since then they have struggled with how to explain a trinity while claiming to be monotheistic.

As a RADICAL AND THOROUGH REPUDIATION of the Old Iranian religion. Descriptions of "good guys" in the Avesta stereotypically begin "He detested the Devas and followed Ahura Mazda". Your refusal to accept the idea that different religions were, you know, actually different looks silly when you are conflating religions that aren't even similar, but looks downright crazy when you conflate religions which were hostile to each other

I accept that religions diverged from common origins. Iranian Proto-Zoroastrianism tended to separate itself from Hinduism by regarding Hindu gods as evil. It is still a common practice in Christianity and Judaism to demonise older gods when new gods were invented, especially after military conquests. Christians made Satan/Lucifer into a de facto evil God as a way of invalidating Angra Maingu, Ariman, Lir, Poseidon, Manannan, and Balor..

Or to the 12 tribes of Israel. Hint to you: the "Zodiac" is a Middle Eastern, not an Indo-European, concept.

I do not claim that western Indo-Europeans were into the Zodiac Myths. I do not think that the Celts were. The Celts did have an astronomicaal aspect which they probably inherited from the pre-Celtic people of Ireland and Britain and possibly Gaul. Their stone monuments attest to much interest in solstices, equinoxes, and movement of planets. Western Indo-Europeans who went from the Black Sea region to the Atlantic coast conquered and were somewhat absorbed by those Homo sapiens often referred to as Maglamose, Tardenosians, Cro-Magnons, or Monument Builders. Yes, Indo-europeans did not build Stonehenge, Newgrange, Skara Brae, the dolmens, the standing stone circles, and other burial mounds that incorporated alignment of light openings to correspond to solstices. Molecular Biologist Genetic scientists have shown that we Irish and Scots are genetically not very Indo-European. We are most closely related by DNA to the non-Indo-European Basques. The religions featuring Dagda or Aed Alainn, Lugh or Lug, were imposed by the invading Indo-Europeans such as the Milesians and the Bell Beaker people.

"Aed Alainn"? I cannot find that name anywhere

Your ignorance surprizes me.Aed Álainn (Aed means fire, álainn means beautiful or divine).

Dagda

(name somewhat mysterious but perhaps a nursery-word like "daddy") indeed had lots and lots of children. Lug however was not one of them.

Dagda is indeed the main "Father of the Gods" but in some regions Aed Alainn is a different name for the Father of the Gods. They are the same god by a different name. The origin of Aed Alainn is interesting because he was originally the God of Fire (Divine Fire or Aed Alainn.) Tir Alainn is the old word for Heaven. I find that interesting and coincidental that Moses believed that Yaweh was a burning bush and archaeologists have said that Yahweh was originally a Semitic God of Fire. So Yahweh is equivalent to Dagda and to Aed Alainn. I think that was purely coincidental.

Dis Pater

is a late borrowing from Greek, in which it was (along with "Hades" and "Pluto") a euphemism for the unspeakable name of the god of death. In Gaul, as in India, the king of the dead is simply the first human, who was also the first to die; he is the father of humans, not of any gods.
Dwyvan is the "Noah" figure who built a boat to get away when the rising seas washed away "Lyonesse" (the land between Brittany and Cornwall, which was above water for a long time when the English Channel was just a little river during the ocean-minimum of the last glaciation).

You are confusing the Arthurian Legend of the 11th Century. Lyonesse was a fictional place. Celts were not there at the end of the Ice Age. I agree on Dis Pater which is Greek.

Cernunnos

is the god of rock-piles (to mark paths for travellers) and of mountain goats, cognate with Greek Hermes.

Cernunnos was the antlered god of the Celts also called Cern or Hern in Britain. I think he was the god of the sacred forests and protector of nature from man's fouling it up. Some regarded him as a messenger god but Lir was the major messenger god or Holy Ghost. The god of the sea equivalent to Poseidon or Neptune was Manannan Mac Lir (Manannan the son of the god Lir.)

Lug

of which most of the names (including the Latinized "Lugus") are just variant spellings, was the Sun God, and the Wolf God, but not the "Son" of any of the "Fathers" you named. Lir was a totally irrelevant god of the sea: do you have some kind of random-deity-name-inserter? "Krishna was the Spanish goddess of wine" or "Thor was the Chinese god of sheep" would make as much sense as some of your identifications.

I must correct you. Lugh or Lug was the Sun God and "father" of humanity. He was part of a Trinity that included the Earth Goddess Brigit and the Moon goddess Danu. However we had there is a super-Trinity. Obviously, Lugh had a father too.

Lugh's father was Dagda or Aed Álainn, the Celtic Father of the Gods. For me personally he is the metaphor for the creator or Big Bang. His repulsive force (speculated to be Dark Energy) exploded the Big Bang and keeps the universe expanding. Galaxies move away from each other. Balor of the One Eye was the mischievous god perhaps the Uncertainty Principle while the third God (Goddess) was Sila na nGig, the Matter Universe Mother.

Indeed. And they had no habit of singling out any set of three as particularly important. You can randomly grab four names and call it a "quaternity" just as easily.

True, but for some reason human superstition seems to be obsessed with magic numbers and for whatever reason likes 3, 7, and 12. When Romans invented Christianity, they were frustrated over pretending to be Monotheists while having two gods, Yahweh and his subordinate son, Jesus (Arianism). They fixed that by creating a third god, the Holy Ghost likely borrowed from Indo-European Pagans, to make a Trinity. They insisted that the Trinity really was Monotheism. The three gods were just three personalities of one god. Yet the N.T. clearly shows that the three "personalities" were not equal. Yahweh knew things that Jesus did not know. Jesus was sent to do the Father's work. Jesus addressed Yahweh the Father in a submissive manner. The Holy Spirit Personality carries messages.

Brigit

was a warrior-goddess, particularly responsible for defending fortifications (the root brig is as in the Germanic -burg suffix, now meaning "town" but originally "fortress"). Danu was the goddess of rivers. They are both female, I grant you, which gives them as much in common with Mary as with Cleopatra, Imelda Marcos, or Hilary Clinton.

Crikey, you are way off base on this. Brigit was the Earth Mother and fertility goddess. Natural springs and rivers came from her and her springs heal people. Later Christians replaced her with the Virgin Mary. In no way was she a warrior. Danu was the Moon Goddess and her festivals were associated with Moon cycles. The warrior goddess was a third Trinity of goddesses, Babd Catha, Morrigan, and Anu. She was the Battle Raven, the beautiful seductress, and the Old Hag.

Actually, it is your bizarre insistence that everyone all the way back to Proto-Indo-Europeans has "always" worshipped the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit which is far more reminiscent of Tea Partiers pretending that "the Constitution was entirely derived from the Bible."

Bollocks and rubbish! I know we had religions many hundreds of millennia before Moses, Zoroaster, or Paul invented the current idiotic gods you worship. We do not know much about what the pre-Indo-European religion was like apart from its fascination with astronomy, seasonal changes, agriculture, solstices, equinoxes, and mid-season nights. I never agreed with the Tea Baggers saying that the Constitution was based on the bloody Bible. The constitution was based on teachings of the Freemasons and knowledge handed down from the Knights Templar. In fact the US Constitution is contrary to much of what is in the bloody Bible. The Constitution legislates separation of church and state despite that the present US Theocratic Government ignores that fact.

Contrary to the Bloody Bible, the US Constitution gives equal rights to women. outlaws slavery, guarantees freedom of and from religion, gives freedom of speech, press, and assembly.

The Bible is to the Constitution as Mein Kampf is to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In fact, Mein Kampf is full of biblical quotes and modified biblical quotes.

The "miter" is derived from the head-dress of James the Just, brother of Jesus, who wore a white peaked crown as the next heir to the Davidic royal line. This style of crown goes back very anciently in the Middle East, seen in the "Phrygian cap" of Anatolia, and Hittite images, and one half of the Pharaoh's "double crown" (white peaked, for Lower Egypt; red circlet with sacred snake for Upper Egypt). It has nothing whatsoever to do with Persia in general, or Mithraism in particular.

WRONG AGAINThe Mithraic bishops wore a mithra, or miter, as their badge of office which was also adopted by early Christian bishops. During a mass, Mithraists commemorated the
ascension of the sun-god by eating a mizd, a sun shaped bun
with the sword (cross) of Mithra. The mass and the communion
wafer were likewise adapted to Christianity. The Roman
Catholic mass wafer has maintained this sun shape for over a
thousand years
The Pagan Origins Of Christian Mythology | RM.com

It amazes me how you people hang on to discredited superstitions for so long despite being clearly idiotic.

Amergin

 

[mojobadshah]

Are we in agreement that trinities is restrictedly an Indo-European phenomenon? In Indic? In Iranian? The question made me think of this:

"I have suggested that Zeus, he original sky-god, took over the tempestuous functions of the more dedicated Keraunos. According to Hesiod (Th. 140 f., 501-6) he received the necessary equipment from three sons of the secondary sky-god Ouranos. Their names, Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, represent the thunder, the lighting, and the shining bolt. They made these weapons for Zues..." - Indo-European Poetry and Myth, M.L. West pg. 248

Does this remind anyone of the 3 in 1 idea of the Christian trinity? Can anyone see "Good Thought, Good Word, and Good Deed" equate to "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," respectively?

While searching for the above quote I also happened to come across this note:

"We still associate Easter with eggs. They make an obvious symbol of rebirth or of the reborn sun." - - Indo-European Poetry and Myth, M.L. West pg. 236

Where does the Mithraic concept of the world-egg originate?

 

[Amergin]

That was an interesting post, Mo. It seems quite plausible to me.

I have no idea what the World Egg is or originates. I will do some searches.

Mardi Gras seems to have come from ancient Romans Their mid-February festival known as Lupercalia honored the god Lupercus, alternately known as the god of fertility and the god of agriculture and pastoral shepherds.

In my ancestral Celtic lands it comes near the time we called Imbolc. IMBOLC is celebrated February 1-2 (later transformed into CANDLEMAS by the church, and popular now as Groundhog Day). IMBOLC marked the beginning of spring, the beginning of new life (in Britain the beginning of lambing season). Dedicated to the ancient mother goddess in her maiden aspect, it was later transformed into a feast day for the Irish saint of the same name (and attributes), St. Brigid. This precedes Easter which in Christianity and Celtic Paganism is a Fertility Festival.

BEALTAINE (BEALLTAINN in Scots Gaelic, meaning May Day), celebrated April 30-May 1. This is the third festival of the agricultural year. The myth surrounding this festival is common to many ancient pagan religions. The god, BEL (or CERNUNOS, the horned god of Ireland) dies but is reborn as the goddess' son. He then impregnates her ensuring the never-ending cycle of rebirth. This is very basic FERTILITY worship. May Day traditions includes young people picking flowers in the woods (and spending the night there), and the dance around the May Pole, weaving red (for the god) and white (for the goddess) streamers round and round. A great bonfire celebrates the return of the sun. In Ireland, the first bonfire was lit on Tara by the High King followed by all the others. On May Day itself, the Highland tradition has the entire community leading the cattle to summer pasturage, not to return until Samhain.

I think Christians may have invented Easter from pagan origins but made it a celebration of the death of the Christian God Jesus and his rebirth in 36 hours. The rebirth of Jesus does have a fertility aspect. The natural world that died in Winter is resurrected by the third Spring festival.

What I do not know is when the evolving Jesus Cult produced Arianism and eventually Trinitarianism. When did Christians decide to celebrate the birth of Jesus at the Winter Solstice? When did Christians decide to celebrate the death and rebirth of Jesus at the Indo-European festivals of natural rebirth?

I ask you, Mo, if you know the answer. I do not think Gobshite X has reliable information.

Amergin