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Let’s Go For A Easter Walk
Easter echoes the eons old human festivity to celebrate the arrival of spring. The dark and cold days of winter are gone. The bright time of fertility has come.
Today's fertility symbols of Easter, the egg and the hare, relate to the old Germanic fertility goddess Eostre (Ostara). Another related goddess is Ishtar, a Mesopotamian representation of love, who stepped down into the underworld of death but was revived. The Christian resurrection of Jesus is probably a transformation of this older tale.
When the Christian message spread from its eastern Mediterranean origin its incorporation of old local gods and fables helped to convert the multi-theistic societies to the new monotheistic believe. The gods of the pre-Christian religions were not completely discarded but their tales were transformed to support the message the Christian preachers were spreading.
It is finally spring, the darkness has vanished and this is my favored holiday.
Happy Easter
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Please join me, Johann van Goethe and Dr. Faust on our traditional Easter Walk:
Look from this height whereon we find us
Back to the town we have left behind us,
Where from the dark and narrow door
Forth a motley multitude pour.
They sun themselves gladly and all are gay,
They celebrate Christ's resurrection to-day.
For have not they themselves arisen?
From smoky huts and hovels and stables,
From labor's bonds and traffic's prison,
From the confinement of roofs and gables,
From many a cramping street and alley,
From churches full of the old world's night,
All have come out to the day's broad light.
…
How it hums o'er the fields and clangs from the steeple!
This is the real heaven of the people,
Both great and little are merry and gay,
I am a man, too, I can be, to-day.
“Oblivion of history. There never was a Christ and certainly not a resurrection. Please excuse me.”
Posted by: hatomune | Mar 31 2024 9:52 utc | 14
There was certainly a Christ, the resurrection bit I don’t subscribe to but I do respect those believe so.
Both Socrates and Jesus were not afraid of death.
The New Testament was written by Greeks in Greek-they were all educated, steeped in the Greek tradition and they told the story of the death of Socrates (he could’ve easily have exiled himself from Athens but he took his life with Hemlock as a martyr to truth)and placed the model on Christ:
“How serendipitous is it for our purposes that Socrates traces his lineage not only
to an artisan, in general, but also, to a carpenter, in particular! As we know, Jesus was
the son of Joseph a fact supported by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke: “Joseph the
husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born” (Matthew 1:16 [Revised Standard Version]);
“And Joseph also went up from Galilee … to be enrolled with Mary his betrothed, who
was with child” (Luke 2:4-5); and “Is not this [Jesus] Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4:22).
Joseph’s occupation was that of a carpenter as evidenced by the quote from Matthew, “Is
not this [Jesus] the carpenter’s son?” (Matthew 13:55), and similarly in Mark, “Is not this
[Jesus] the carpenter, the son of Mary…” (Mark 6:3). Further, in the New Testament
apocrypha, The History of Joseph the Carpenter, “He [Joseph] was, besides, skillful in his
trade, which was that of a carpenter” (History of Joseph 2). Note that in the quote from
Mark, it is Jesus who is referred to as being the carpenter. However, there is an assumed customary association that the son follows in the footsteps of the father thereby granting
Joseph the status of carpenter, too. Hence, we see not only the similarity of an artisan
lineage between Jesus and Socrates, but also the common cultural association of an
occupation being handed down from one generation to the next. The salient point to be
grasped is not that both men were the sons of artisans or craftsmen, but rather, that in the
cultures of each, craftsmen were common working class people. They were neither
wealthy nor politically powerful. How, then, could they be heroes? More importantly,
why should we (or the people of their time) listen to anything they have to say? As the
Nazarenes who rejected Jesus asked, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these
mighty works?” (Matthew 13:54).
The answer is provided by Campbell.
The makers of legend have seldom rested content to regard the world’s greatest
heroes as mere human beings who broke past the horizons that limited their
fellows and returned with such boons as any man with equal faith and courage
might have found. On the contrary, the tendency has always been to endow the
hero with extraordinary powers from the moment of birth, or even the moment of
conception. (Campbell 1973, 319)
Specifically, for our heroes, Jesus and Socrates, we must now explore the second
meaning of demiurge for it is through their divine lineage that each derives their
legitimacy as a mythological hero and, subsequently, their credibility to be a deliverer of
the boon. As previously mentioned, the divine sense of the word demiurge refers to the
god/God who created the universe. We find evidence of this in Plato’s Timaeus where
demiourgos is translated as “maker” (Zeyl 1997, 1234n9), “Now to find the maker and
father of this universe” (Plato Timaeus 28c) and “O gods, works divine whose maker and
father I am” (Plato Timaeus 41a). So, too, the God of the Old Testament is a Demiourgos,
a craftsman or creator, as described in the book of Genesis: “In the
beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1); and “In the day that the
Lord God made the earth and the heavens” (Genesis 2:4). Therefore, by using the
secondary, divine, meaning of demiurge when discussing the lineage of our heroes, we
are alluding to the possibility that both men have fathers of supernatural origin.
In Alcibiades, Socrates traces his lineage to Zeus, “mine [my family] goes back to
Daedalus and Daedalus’ goes back to Hephaestus, son of Zeus” (Plato Alcibiades 121a).
In Greek mythology, Zeus is the father of the gods. In Timaeus, Plato traces the lineage
of Zeus back to the demiurge:
The Earth he [the demiurge] devised to be our nurturer… Earth and Heaven gave
birth to Ocean and Tethys, who in turn gave birth to Phorcys, Cronus and Rhea
and all the gods in that generation. Cronus and Rhea gave birth to Zeus and Hera,
as well as all those siblings who are called by names we know. (Plato Timaeus
40b & e, 41a)
In Matthew’s Gospel, the lineage of Jesus is traced back to the house of David through
his human father Joseph. Chapter 1 begins with, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus
Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1)…. (1)
1.https://digitalcommons.du.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1655&context=etd
Posted by: canuck | Mar 31 2024 12:18 utc | 37
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