Bible. New Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Jesus Christ -- Historicity
As is well known, Jesus, too, had three fathers, namely, his
heavenly father, Jahwe, the Holy Spirit, and also his earthly father,
Joseph. The latter is also a work-master, artizan, or "carpenter," as
the word "tekton" indicates. Similarly, Kinyras, the father of Adonis,
is said to have been some kind of artizan, a smith or carpenter. That
is to say, he is supposed to have invented the hammer and the lever
and roofing as well as mining. In Homer he appears as the maker of
the ingenious coat of mail which Agamemnon received from him as a
guest-friend. [180] The father of Hermes also is an artizan. Now Hermes
closely resembles Agni as well as Jesus. He is the "good messenger,"
the Euangelos; that is, the proclaimer of the joyful message of
the redemption of souls from the power of death. He is the God of
sacrifices, and as such "mediator" between heaven and earth. He is the
"guide of souls" (Psychopompos) and "bridegroom of souls" (beloved of
Psyche). He is also a God of fertility, a guardian of the flocks, who
is represented in art as the "good shepherd," the bearer of the ram,
a guide upon the roads of earth, a God of the door-hinge (Strophaios)
and guardian of the door, [181] a god of healing as well as of speech,
the model of all human reason, in which capacity he was identified
by the Stoics with the Logos that dwelt within the world. [182] Just
as in the Rigveda Tvashtar stands with Savitar, the divine father of
Agni, and Joseph the "carpenter" with Jahwe, as father of the divine
mediator, so the divine artificer, Hephaistos, whose connection with
Tvashtar is obvious, is looked upon together with Zeus, the father
of heaven, as the begetter of Hermes. [183]
Now if Joseph, as we have already seen, was originally a God, Mary,
the mother of Jesus, was a Goddess. Under the name of Maya she is
the mother of Agni, i.e., the principle of motherhood and creation
simply, as which she is in the Rigveda at one time represented by
the fire-producing wood, the soft pith, in which the fire-stick was
whirled; at another as the earth, with which the sky has mated. She
appears under the same name as the mother of Buddha as well as of
the Greek Hermes. She is identical with Maira (Maera) as, according
to Pausanias, viii. 12, 48, the Pleiad Maia, wife of Hephaistos,
was called. She appears among the Persians as the "virgin" mother
of Mithras. As Myrrha she is the mother of the Syrian Adonis;
as Semiramis, mother of the Babylonian Ninus (Marduk). In the
Arabic legend she appears under the name of Mirzam as mother of the
mythical saviour Joshua, while the Old Testament gives this name to
the virgin sister of that Joshua who was so closely related to Moses;
and, according to Eusebius, [184] Merris was the name of the Egyptian
princess who found Moses in a basket and became his foster-mother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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