REPLY TO RICHARD | 2005-11-07
My religion is very, very simple. If I am religious at all, it is simply a reliance on Jesus.
What fascinates me personally is the HISTORY of the ideas that led to Christianity.
My study of history tells me that Semites invent nothing. So I do not look to the Old Testament (OT) for hte real origins of Christianity. This at least gives me some special utility. Tens of thousands of theologians make a living digging into the Old Testament to try to somehow dig everything Christ said out of it.
There should be room for one amateur to get his nose out of the OT and look around for the truth elsewhere in history.
That is what I am talking to Richard about here.
Richard,
Zoroastrianism was an Aryan religion. Historians kept trying to push Zoroaster forward to about 600BC so he would not conflict with the real dating of the OT. Because of all the earlier references that have since been found, there is no doubt now that Zoroaster was at least 1200 BC.
I am not a theologian, but I'm a pretty good historian. Roman Christians competed with the Mazdaists, who were from Persia where Zoroastrianism is from. The Mazdaists used bread and wine and talkng about how THEIR savior was born of a virgin while sherpherds watched by night. Their services consisted of bread and wine. Actually it predated them considerably.
Naturally the Christians thought all this was stolen from them, and was therefore just blasphemy. I think there is more explanation of Christianity in Mazdaism than in the totally unrelated Old Testament.
I think Elizabeth is right. The fatal flaw of Mazdaism was that it excluded women.
The Protestant Old Testament excludes everything after about 600BC, the date you refer to.
You may look at all this as anti-Christian, or you may look at it as I do, something that puts Jesus outside the realm of OT Judaism, a whole newness. To an Old Testament Christian, it is pure heresy.
When Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the light," I do not think he meant, "The OT and me are the way, the truth and the light."
The truth is not in the Old Testament, and Jesus was not just another Jewish prophet.
No, he did not tell the Jews that in so many words. But his hints were very broad indeed.
Richard, you said,
"True Christian morality was taught in the (Old Jewish) law."
Among other things, true Christian morality does not torture babies.
Referring to the OT you mention THE captivity.
WHICH captivity?
The Babylonian captivity is the one everybody knows about, and fits in with the poor, poor little Jewish bit. But the Persian captivity was where Judaism went from a pagan religion to good versus evil and the concept of a savior, which it learned from Zoroastrianism.
The only non-Jew praised in the OT is Cyrus, the only non-Jew who, without further explanation in today's version, "did the work of the Lord."
In the NT, the Zoroastrian Magi accepted Christ before the Jews rejected him.
Trying to shoehorn Christ into the Old Testament is what theologians have spent eons doing, so that they worship The Holy Land in the name of savior whose kingdom is not of this earth.
These are my own observations, and, contrary to your comment about Deutoronomy, I have read the book. If that covenant were still relevant, Jesus would have stayed in the Temple.
Ther is a lot of code in Jesus's words, as when he said render unto God what is God's and unto Caesar what is Caesar's. There is much there that the OT does not contain or predict.
Jesus was not speaking in a land of free speech.
Thus endeth all my theology.