The Resurrection Before Jesus
According to a recent New York Times article, "Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection," a stone tablet discovered roughly a decade ago is now under scrutiny by the academic religious community. It appears that the 87 lines of Hebrew embedded on this stone discuss the idea of bodily resurrection after three days – years before the historical birth date of Jesus. If this is true, it raises the possibility that the resurrection could be a metaphor for the redemption of the entire community of Israel, not only one human being. The case, as you can imagine, is being fiercely debated.
The most serious question the debate poses is this: Why did it take this tablet to make people – scholars no less – realize that? I'm used to the jargon of academia; it has been part of my studies for fifteen years. In fact, I even like some of it. Treating religion as history, and not as "fact," is an important pursuit in an age that can be defined in so many ways by the term "blind faith." But the problem with a debate like this is how poorly metaphors, much less mythologies, are understood in certain academic circles, as well as by the general population.
Hence our religious interpreters encourage the public to be more intrigued by conspiracy theories, a la The Da Vinci Code, than by understanding the mythological and metaphorical significance of these ancient stories. When you present analogies as living, breathing humans, you actually take away their humanness. Instead of personified ideas, you are left with the ideas of particular persons. This defeats the purpose of the prophecies, which is to educate and empower every individual with the lessons of religion. We spend more time wondering about what particular historical figures might have done when alive than doing what we need to do ourselves. There is a good reason "primitive" societies employed animals and imaginary figments as their gods: those figures couldn't be mistaken as human, so humans would not make the mistake of separating themselves from the rest of the world.
There exist much older tablets, discovered a century-and-a-half ago, that were even more significant harbingers of the biblical cycles: the world's oldest known story, the Epic of Gilgamesh. That epic tale laid the groundwork for the flood and ark, the resurrection, and the entwining of politics and spirituality which is the hallmark of every religious tradition, not just that of the Bible. This does not mean that the biblical writers knew Gilgamesh and deliberately copied it. In oral traditions, stories were passed down and remixed for centuries; they changed according to the temperament of the time. There were likely thousands of different Noahs and Christs with other names that never made it to the page. What mattered is their influence on the people who heard the stories, not the factuality of Noah as a historical being.
What seems apparent is that this recently discovered tablet will accomplish at least one thing. It is already fueling the continual ego battle between two religions that have shared the same God and book for millennia. Having faith in a particular value system, and organizing your life around those values, is a noble discipline. But believing those values to be the only way a person should experience reality is the result of spending too much time not actually experiencing the world around you – not traveling, not engaging in conversations with people of other faiths, not being critical of your own faith. This leads to the false righteousness that the prophets of religions spoke against, not in favor of.
Whether or not a historical figure called Christ ever existed is irrelevant. The term "Christ," like the word "Buddha," is significant because it represents the individual who has given up his or her ego in search of something universal. As the Buddha noted, this does not even imply "goodness." For him, it was more important to be compassionate than good; the notion of "good" is an abstract and relative quality to begin with. These ideas are lyrical mandalas designed to be reflected and meditated upon, and ultimately integrated into this life now, not a life that may or may not exist in the future. Who we are is defined by our behavior, not by what we believe.
Between the two poles of blind faith and academia there is a balance between the impulse that needs a definitive historicity, and the tendency to accept religious icons without questioning. Of course, resurrection stories were told before the time of Jesus. Of course, the resurrection theme preceded Jesus' life by thousands of years, and not only decades. These stories resonate as part of the story of eternal life, the undiscovered and highly sought after state of being that has perplexed humans since time immemorial. We have always asked: what is after this life, where we come from, where are we going? To freeze a moment in time is to be forever stuck in the same place, and if there's anything we need in order to live freely, it is this first: recognize that human existence is a process; we are not stagnant beings. We are blessed to have had great souls before us point the way. The path, however, must be walked by our own two feet.
Image by *L*u*z*a*, used courtesy of a Creative Commons license.
Tweet- 7-10-08
- Derek Beres's blog
- Login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version
Comments
Thank you, Derek, for this
The rabbit's running in the ditch...
Beatniks...
..out to make it rich.
not wealthy...wow! the differance is in the sauce.
Must! be the season of the Witch
Jordan Maxwell
talks about this stuff a lot in his lectures. Much of these oral & written traditions turn out to be based on observation of the stars (astrology). The "resurrection after 3 days" business has to do with the winter solstice as observed in the northern hemisphere. After the 3 shortest days around Dec. 25, the days would start to get longer. God's son (sun) was reborn! Also interesting is the "virgin birth" as the resurrection took place in the constellation of Virgo at the time. There's other synchs as well. Three wise men = three stars in Orion's belt. This stuff goes way back before the Bible & written language. Check out some of Jordan Maxwell's lectures on the you tubes. Also, the movie Zeitgeist gets into some of this.
With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another. - Jorge Luis Borges, The Circular Ruins
return of the king......
You gotta be at a stone circle on dec 21st and see the sun/son return...i agree with much that has been written on here and can see what was christianised through the teachings of christ and the early celtic monks.
From holy wells and holy stones,once pagan now pilgrimages for christians who would have little faith or knowledge in the actuality of the place,just reverence in that they are visiting somewhere in the footsteps of an early saint...we learned so much in school about the endeavours of these early saints,their travels to ourlaw paganism and bring the druids away from their sites of worship...in school the druids were portrayed as robed fireworshippers and weather watchers,ignorant to the new God that was being preached...they had to be converted from their pagan ways...so...most of lost teachings were lost in this way...
.but we have'nt all been brainwashed now...2000 yrs on and the realisation is coming full circle....the convenient story of the infallible god and christ his son is'nt the only story to grasp onto....early propaganda at its finest...
So....when we next hear or sing christmas carols extolling the return of christ the king...remember that it is the Sun we are celebrating...and parables remain just parables ...when the light enters and illuminates the interior of Newgrange...light coming into darkness thats the sign to rejoice and welcome bk the light...and light is new hope...
Solas
WORD
"Beatniks, are like modern day gnostics they looked for he subtext everywhere, pickin up every stitch."
"I believe we can have the confidence that “we” are all present–and-accounted-for (not only from earth, but from around the galaxy)....." "Some of us to witness the transition, some of us to cheer it on, and some of us to struggle at the helm."
"There is a good reason "primitive" societies employed animals and imaginary figments as their gods: those figures couldn't be mistaken as human, so humans would not make the mistake of separating themselves from the rest of the world."
thanks all for being a part in the evolution of my consciousness.
ALL these points i cheer to....I still find no need to doubt the Existence and power of the work Christ Jesus of Nazareth as a real human being. That would defeat the point. I am not calling that work and the actions of Christian establishments the same thing.
I was quite suprised when
I was quite suprised when hearing the news that there were stories of resurrecting before Christ. I thought that was pretty well known. It didn't seem like much of a story. It does seem though like another attempt of the media to stir up debate and challenge people who still have faith.
There is one thing that gets overlooked though in these things which is that many Christians have a viable experience to base their faith on. It isn't just "this book has all the facts." It is that, but that has nothing to do with why people persist in their beliefs. They persist because they have had a life changing experience; they've hit the wall and survived and they trust in that power that saved them, gave them new life. This is the New Testament. It's infused with that feeling people have in there own experience of redemption.
It's different with people who are born into it or who join a church for other reasons. They're less likely to have had an experience to ground why they believe the Bible is true. It's merely tradition or dogma with them. With this sort of attitude, people go and fact check because they can't understand why they, or anyone, would believe such a story. They eventually end up with their own dogma which is uncreatively the opposite of the original dogma.
The debate builds and just goes on and on because neither side is talking about the central issue which is the experience of the individual. And if someone experiences the Christ within them, what other widely known options do they have in order to understand their experience than the church down the street. Nothing else is so visably waiting to help them understand.
Jesus=Horus
New news is no news
How often have we heard this? 'There is nothing new under the sun'?
It must speak to something other than what is proposed by the typical dogma proferred by churches of many stripes whose message boils down to an "after-life" experience".
The "metaphysical" school, a "gnostic" school, may say "three days" means some triple cycle of something other than "days" as we know "days". What might that mean? Three cycles of self-torment, then, 'voila'! We see the light? I don't mock this. I merely ask.
Or, does "three days" mean 'three thousand years'?
For the scripture says: for God, a thousand years is as one day. So, by the excruciatingly detailed calculation of some, the Messiah, has yet to come. Probably somewhere about the year 3,000 CE (Christian Era).
In this example, the "death" happened about 2,000 years ago. In other words, the rise of what we call the offspring of the Roman concept.
Mosaic Law, Judaic Law, was preserved, but only by incorporation into the Greco-Roman concept, which lived on. But the Mosaic-Judaic ideal "died". And "three days" later, it rises again. Is that what we are supposed to have faith in? Something purely temporal-physical-political?
Well, what if it has something to do with anyone who dies? What if anyone who dies, or whose body is destroyed, maybe they regain self-consciousness as "self" after some 72 hours? as calculated by earthlings?
Does this have to do with physical resurrection? Or does it have to do with consciousness-unto-itself?
Does this mean when self-aware after shock of death, one is immediately sucked into a new body . . . . reincarnated; or born into a world of one's own mental/emotional making forever thereafter?
If it is a general discription, one would expect that there would not be any use of any discriptor of "a one"; rather, a discriptor of everyone. Otherwise, it seems to pertain to some particular example or examplar.
In other words, it may pertain to anyone, but it has a particular examplar who will raise peoples' awareness that such also pertains to them. Otherwise, it is all about just one special one who overcomes death, and there is no other like unto that one.
In 1918, Paul Carus was published by "The Open Court Publishing Company" under the title: "Virgil's Prophecy on The Saviour's Birth - - - The Fourth Epilogue".
Carus was credited as having "Edited and translated" this ancient text. It is not a creation of P. Carus.
We also find, if we look, in the ancient writings of Vyasadeva Krishna, in the Mahabharata, reference to the "Soloquy of the Eternal Youth". In both Virgil and in Vyasadeva, reference to a coming "Saviour" and "resurrection" or "eternality" of life.
In both these examples, we can see room to view these words as referent to a "spiritual body" that rises after death and moves from life to life or lives according to the principles of "the gods".
What's new in the mythology/religion of Jesus, as "Saviour", is the ideal of overcoming not only immorality and selfishness, but of mortality in any form whatever.
The life of Jesus is a new thing, a new story ideal. The hero who is not only good to the extreme, even to the extent that he is confident enough to lay his life down as an example of self-less love with some permanent extinction, but as a beacon of hope for others in showing that death is no real "end" or "extinction" at all. Even the body can be immortalized and wieldable as a permanent substance so that all descendents can see and touch and feel this attainer.
The problem here is when the posterity or receivers of the facts of the deed change the deed into a kind of idol or idolization of the doer, and so, the intent of the act is used as a falsification of the actuality. That becomes a perverse form of 'oral history' and eventually, of written history.
The entire "prophecy" that begins with Moses until the last book of the "Old Testament", is a form of lens. It is a focusing of attention on a particular point in time and person who shall be 'that One' or examplar.
Where it says "I will do a new thing", it must be taken in context of the People to whom it is spoken.
This chronology, which we can call the Hebrew-Mosaic- Judaic chronology, doesn't exist in a vacuum. Other Peoples exist along side. Other oral, religio-economic and every-day traditions exist along-side.
We don't have any rational basis for thinking the concept of "resurrection" is new to "Christianity" or even "Judaism".
We are living in the after-effects of a relatively recent event that might speak only to people who read or understand differently than those who transmit this information to us through time.
"Time" is indefinable. "Recent" is entirely subjective. We measure time and history in terms of mortality or death. Therefore, "resurrection" is both a term offering hope, and a slap in the face or a form of mockery of received ideas.
I highly recommend the serious student of history of this topic to investigate the works of J A Van Buitenen, who translated the Mahabharata. The other works mentioned here, and the ideas promulgated by that "soundrel" Baird Spalding. There is a thread that lives in all of this stuff, that cannot be "scientifically" demonstrated, but speak to something that might pertain only to personal, first hand experience. So, if we prove these things to ourselves, then what? To be self-consistent, we can only apply that proof towards confidence in ourselves. What's the end-effect? We lose fear. How can it ever become some magic-wand that makes others think like we think or feel? It can't. We are all hermetically sealed vessels. We associate by being like minded, of like character. A spectrum of infinite variety. Thus, infinite 'heavens'.
On this basis alone, I am certain, that one person's heaven, is another person's 'hell'. So we are stratified and always tend towards equals. We are always going to be "underclass-members" to some. Thank goodness! Our teachers are with us always. When we take thought of those who follow with the same consideration as those "above" us, we are serving. Maybe not with the same quality of wisdom.
This is a humiliating realization. Good thing. Pride, egoism, is a block to all learning or the ability to be taught or lead. And if we are unable to be lead, we are presumptious. We think we are the be-all and end-all of principle. Principle is by definition, a-personal, but it contains within itself, by definition alone, a presage of actual people who have incorporated It into their lives and their bodies.
So there must be examples in history of people who have done or will do things delineated in the life of Jesus. It is even preserved in that tradition when some disciples spoke to Jesus about some stranger casting out demons in "your name". And Jesus said, "don't try to stop them; those who are not against us are with us." Note he didn't say 'against me'. He said "us". So, his was an egalitarian message. It was and is the highly magnified and exalted message of our times. Maybe not understood in its fulness.
The 'new thing' or 'good news' is when someone demonstrates such and says "What I do, you can do, and greater things".
But children want heros. They want "gods". Doing the work, that's another thing. So these excuses are built up. <
designer handbags and eyeglasses