godnotgod
Thou art That
Early superstitious man believed a god was responsible for delivering calamity, in the form of locusts, disease, floods, famine, etc. to him or his family as punishment for his misbehavior. He thought the only way for the punishment to cease was to make offerings of appeasement, either in the form of grain or animal sacrifice.
At the core of Christian doctrine is the theme of blood sacrifice as a device to wash sin and guilt away. This idea involves a scapegoat, which has its roots in pagan practice, and as a means of appeasement of the angry God Yaweh over the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, in order to re-open the Gates of Paradise which their sin closed to humankind:
A concept superficially similar to the biblical scapegoat is attested in two ritual texts in archives at Ebla of the 24th century BC. They were connected with ritual purification on the occasion of the king's wedding. In them, a she-goat with a silver bracelet hung from her neck was driven forth into the wasteland of "Alini"; "we" in the report of the ritual involves the whole community. Such "elimination rites", in which an animal, without confession of sins, is the vehicle of evils (not sins) that are chased from the community are widely attested in the Ancient Near East.
Scapegoat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Later, animals were sacrificed by the score as a means of sin atonement. It was thought that the guilt or sin could be transferred to the animal acting as scapegoat, thereby relieving the participant of his burden:
Throughout the year, the sins of the ancient Israelites were daily transferred to the regular sin offerings as outlined in the Torah in Leviticus Ch 16. Once a year, on the tenth day of the seventh month in the Jewish calendar, the Day of Atonement, the High Priest of Israel sacrificed a bull for a sin offering for his own sins. Subsequently he took two goats and presented them at the door of the tabernacle with a view to dealing with the corporate sins of God's people — the nation of Israel. Two goats were chosen by lot: one to be "The Lord's Goat", which was offered as a blood sacrifice, and the other to be the "Azazel" scapegoat to be sent away into the wilderness. The blood of the slain goat was taken into the Holy of Holies behind the sacred veil and sprinkled on the mercy seat, the lid of the ark of the covenant. Later in the ceremonies of the day, the High Priest confessed the sins of the Israelites to Jehovah placing them figuratively on the head of the other goat, the Azazel scapegoat, who "took them away" never to be seen again. The sin of the nation was thus "atoned for" (paid for) by the "The Lord's Goat" and "The Azazel Goat".
In Christian thought this process prefigures the sacrifice of Christ on the cross through which God has been propitiated and sins can be expiated. Jesus Christ is seen to have fulfilled both of the Biblical "types" - the Lord's goat that deals with the pollution of sin and the scapegoat that removes the "burden of sin". Christians believe that sinners who own their guilt and confess their sins, exercising faith and trust in the person and sacrifice of Jesus, are forgiven of their sins.
Since the second goat was sent away to perish,[14] the word "scapegoat" has developed to indicate a person who is blamed and punished for the sins of others.
Scapegoat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But early Christians, who were actually Nazarene Essenes under the leadership of Yeshu, did not believe in blood sacrifice, nor in bodily resurrection. They did not hold that the life-force was in the blood, but in the breath, as much of their teachings came from Eastern wisdom. What occurred is that the teachings of Yeshu were overwritten by the Romans with those of pagan Mithraism, whose doctrines of blood sacrifice for sin redemption and bodily resurrection provided the basis for the promise of eternal life. This was done as a means of attracting and converting tens of thousands of Mithraic pagans into the new religion of Christianity, its author being that infamous charlatan, one St. Paul of Tarsus, whose birthplace is said to have been a center of Mithraic belief.
Essentially, the washing away of sin via blood sacrifice of a divine sacrificial host would be a form of magic.
I submit that modern Christians have, as one of their cherished doctrinal beliefs, a superstitious pagan practice at its core, and that it actually took a step backwards from the original pure teachings of Yeshu, the Jewish mystical Essene who would have abhorred such practice, as he was a vegetarian, for one thing. Yeshu had no idea that he was to be crucified by the Romans:
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of Christianity as a new religion which developed away from both normal Judaism and the Nazarene variety of Judaism. In this new religion, the Torah was abrogated as having had only temporary validity. The central myth of the new religion was that of an atoning death of a divine being. Belief in this sacrifice, and a mystical sharing of the death of the deity, formed the only path to salvation. Paul derived this religion from Hellenistic sources, chiefly by a fusion of concepts taken from Gnosticism and concepts taken from the mystery religions, particularly from that of Attis. The combination of these elements with features derived from Judaism, particularly the incorporation of the Jewish scriptures, reinterpreted to provide a background of sacred history for the new myth, was unique; and Paul alone was the creator of this amalgam. Jesus himself had no idea of it, and would have been amazed and shocked at the role assigned to him by Paul as a suffering deity. Nor did Paul have any predecessors among the Nazarenes though later mythography tried to assign this role to Stephen, and modern scholars have discovered equally mythical predecessors for Paul in a group called the 'Hellenists'. Paul, as the personal begetter of the Christian myth, has never been given sufficient credit for his originality. The reverence paid through the centuries to the great Saint Paul has quite obscured the more colourful features of his personality. Like many evangelical leaders, he was a compound of sincerity and charlatanry. Evangelical leaders of his kind were common at this time in the Greco-Roman world."[/FONT]
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/maccoby2.htm
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]To begin to understand exactly how the church replaced Yeshua's teachings with a mythology involving blood sacrifice that was current in the religions that appealed to the gentiles during his time, see here:
[/FONT]http://30ce.com/mithras.htm
At the core of Christian doctrine is the theme of blood sacrifice as a device to wash sin and guilt away. This idea involves a scapegoat, which has its roots in pagan practice, and as a means of appeasement of the angry God Yaweh over the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, in order to re-open the Gates of Paradise which their sin closed to humankind:
A concept superficially similar to the biblical scapegoat is attested in two ritual texts in archives at Ebla of the 24th century BC. They were connected with ritual purification on the occasion of the king's wedding. In them, a she-goat with a silver bracelet hung from her neck was driven forth into the wasteland of "Alini"; "we" in the report of the ritual involves the whole community. Such "elimination rites", in which an animal, without confession of sins, is the vehicle of evils (not sins) that are chased from the community are widely attested in the Ancient Near East.
Scapegoat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Later, animals were sacrificed by the score as a means of sin atonement. It was thought that the guilt or sin could be transferred to the animal acting as scapegoat, thereby relieving the participant of his burden:
Throughout the year, the sins of the ancient Israelites were daily transferred to the regular sin offerings as outlined in the Torah in Leviticus Ch 16. Once a year, on the tenth day of the seventh month in the Jewish calendar, the Day of Atonement, the High Priest of Israel sacrificed a bull for a sin offering for his own sins. Subsequently he took two goats and presented them at the door of the tabernacle with a view to dealing with the corporate sins of God's people — the nation of Israel. Two goats were chosen by lot: one to be "The Lord's Goat", which was offered as a blood sacrifice, and the other to be the "Azazel" scapegoat to be sent away into the wilderness. The blood of the slain goat was taken into the Holy of Holies behind the sacred veil and sprinkled on the mercy seat, the lid of the ark of the covenant. Later in the ceremonies of the day, the High Priest confessed the sins of the Israelites to Jehovah placing them figuratively on the head of the other goat, the Azazel scapegoat, who "took them away" never to be seen again. The sin of the nation was thus "atoned for" (paid for) by the "The Lord's Goat" and "The Azazel Goat".
In Christian thought this process prefigures the sacrifice of Christ on the cross through which God has been propitiated and sins can be expiated. Jesus Christ is seen to have fulfilled both of the Biblical "types" - the Lord's goat that deals with the pollution of sin and the scapegoat that removes the "burden of sin". Christians believe that sinners who own their guilt and confess their sins, exercising faith and trust in the person and sacrifice of Jesus, are forgiven of their sins.
Since the second goat was sent away to perish,[14] the word "scapegoat" has developed to indicate a person who is blamed and punished for the sins of others.
Scapegoat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But early Christians, who were actually Nazarene Essenes under the leadership of Yeshu, did not believe in blood sacrifice, nor in bodily resurrection. They did not hold that the life-force was in the blood, but in the breath, as much of their teachings came from Eastern wisdom. What occurred is that the teachings of Yeshu were overwritten by the Romans with those of pagan Mithraism, whose doctrines of blood sacrifice for sin redemption and bodily resurrection provided the basis for the promise of eternal life. This was done as a means of attracting and converting tens of thousands of Mithraic pagans into the new religion of Christianity, its author being that infamous charlatan, one St. Paul of Tarsus, whose birthplace is said to have been a center of Mithraic belief.
Essentially, the washing away of sin via blood sacrifice of a divine sacrificial host would be a form of magic.
I submit that modern Christians have, as one of their cherished doctrinal beliefs, a superstitious pagan practice at its core, and that it actually took a step backwards from the original pure teachings of Yeshu, the Jewish mystical Essene who would have abhorred such practice, as he was a vegetarian, for one thing. Yeshu had no idea that he was to be crucified by the Romans:
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of Christianity as a new religion which developed away from both normal Judaism and the Nazarene variety of Judaism. In this new religion, the Torah was abrogated as having had only temporary validity. The central myth of the new religion was that of an atoning death of a divine being. Belief in this sacrifice, and a mystical sharing of the death of the deity, formed the only path to salvation. Paul derived this religion from Hellenistic sources, chiefly by a fusion of concepts taken from Gnosticism and concepts taken from the mystery religions, particularly from that of Attis. The combination of these elements with features derived from Judaism, particularly the incorporation of the Jewish scriptures, reinterpreted to provide a background of sacred history for the new myth, was unique; and Paul alone was the creator of this amalgam. Jesus himself had no idea of it, and would have been amazed and shocked at the role assigned to him by Paul as a suffering deity. Nor did Paul have any predecessors among the Nazarenes though later mythography tried to assign this role to Stephen, and modern scholars have discovered equally mythical predecessors for Paul in a group called the 'Hellenists'. Paul, as the personal begetter of the Christian myth, has never been given sufficient credit for his originality. The reverence paid through the centuries to the great Saint Paul has quite obscured the more colourful features of his personality. Like many evangelical leaders, he was a compound of sincerity and charlatanry. Evangelical leaders of his kind were common at this time in the Greco-Roman world."[/FONT]
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/maccoby2.htm
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]To begin to understand exactly how the church replaced Yeshua's teachings with a mythology involving blood sacrifice that was current in the religions that appealed to the gentiles during his time, see here:
[/FONT]http://30ce.com/mithras.htm
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