The Jesus Problem: A Restatement of the Myth TheoryRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
The Jesus Problem: A Restatement of the Myth Theory
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Jesus Christ
Everything in the Christian legend falls in with this
identification. The Fathers [559] tell us of one Helen, a prostitute
from Tyre, with whom Simon went about, and whom he gave out to be a
reincarnation of Helen of Troy, and also his "Thought." Helen is almost
unquestionably, as Baur [560] surmised, the Selene or Luna of the old
sun-cultus. In the paragraph following his account of the Semeion,
Lucian tells us that in the forepart of the same temple stands the
throne of Helios, but without a statue; Helios and Selene, the sun and
moon, being the only divinities not sculptured in the temple--though
he goes on to mention that behind the throne is a statue of a clothed
and bearded Apollo, quite different from the Greek form. Here, again,
we have a mystic conception of the Sun-God, a conception necessarily
confusing to ordinary visitors, even supposing the priests themselves
to have had any consistent ideas about it; and the fact [561] that the
temple further contained among other statues one of Helena (herself an
old Moon-Goddess), gave ample opportunity for the usual mythological
variants. Thus it came about that while Justin and Irenæus connect
Simon Magus with Helen, Irenæus says the Simonians have "an image of
Simon in the likeness of Jupiter, and of Helen in that of Minerva"--a
curious statement, which at once recalls that of Lucian [562] that the
Hêrê of the temple of Byblos "has something of Athênê and Aphrodite, of
Selene and Rhea, of Artemis, of Nemesis, and of the Parcæ." This again
squares with the fact that in the Chaldeo-Babylonian system Samas was
associated with the goddess Gula, "triform as personating the moon, and
sometimes replaced by a group of three spouses of equal rank, Malkit,
Gula, and Anunit." [563] And in the Latin translation by Rufinus of
the pseudo-Clementine "Recognitions," for Helena we actually have Luna.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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