2100BC to Now

HISTORY, PART 2
TO DO: 300BC-1000AD
2-5. 2 BC

[CHRISTIAN LEGEND]
The Lord Of Light [Journals] [Aeon]
_From: Aeon III:4 (Dec 1993) -- Lewis M. Greenberg See note * below.
__[CHRIST IMITATED THE SATURN MYTH]
_Allah is the light of the heavens and earth. His light is a niche in which is a lamp, and the lamp is as in a glass, the glass is as though it were a glittering star.- Qoran 24:35. Saturn was the only god who was said to have been born; who lived on Earth among men, preaching and teaching; who died; was buried; who descended to the netherworld; who rose from the dead and eventually ascended into heaven. If the tale sounds familiar,
... " and himself perished in the very waters that had allowed Moses safe passage. According to Velikovsky, in Worlds in Collision, it was the proto-planet Venus which determined the fateful outcome and acted as celestial deliverer.

__[STAR OF BETHLEHEM & THE WISE MEN]
_The Star of Bethlehem: A Choice of Stars. There has been much speculation concerning the exact identification of the celestial phenomenon which supposedly synchronized with the birth of Jesus thereby attracting the Magi to Bethlehem. It has been thought to be a comet, a suggestion considered highly improbable by Thorburn (49) who fails, however, to give any reason for rejecting the idea; a stella[r] nova; (50) or an unusual astronomical conjunction of planets, specifically Saturn and Jupiter. (51) Other possibilities have been suggested as well. (52) Kepler (1571-1631) was the first to point [the conjunctions] out and his calculations have been confirmed by the highest authorities. These conjunctions occurred in the sign of Pisces: and this sign according to all the ancient Jewish authorities (Josephus, Abarbanel, Eliezer, and others), has special reference to Israel. The conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, they hold, always marked the occurrence of some event favorable to Israel; while Kepler, calculating backwards, found that this astronomical phenomenon always coincided with some great historical crisis, viz.: the Revelation to Adam, the birth of Enoch, the Revelation to Noah, the birth of Moses, the birth of Cyrus, the birth of Christ, the birth of Charlemagne, and the birth of Luther. (53) In an attempt to find a middle ground, Holzer (54) has proposed that there were "two stars of Bethlehem" in order to differentiate between what the shepherds saw and what the Magi observed. A new problem is only raised by this theory since one must then accept the account of the shepherds as unquestionably historical, an issue far from settled. Even the historicity of the Magi might be dubious. More recently, Martin (55) has argued that the "Star of Bethlehem" was actually a conjunction of the planet Jupiter and the star Regulus. The Magi followed Jupiter which, on December 25, 2 BC____, came to a stationary point in the middle of the constellation Virgo; it would then have appeared to "stop" over Bethlehem as viewed from Jerusalem.
__[VENUS AS STAR OF BETHLEHEM]
_As previously discussed, the Cave of the Nativity was also the site of lamentations for Adonis, the beloved of Astarte. Now Astarte, the divine mistress of Adonis, was identified with the planet Venus, and her changes from a morning to an evening star were carefully noted by the Babylonian astronomers who drew omens from her alternate appearance and disappearance. Hence we may conjecture that the festival of Adonis was regularly timed to coincide with the appearance of Venus as the Morning or Evening Star. But the star which the people of Antioch saluted at the festival was seen in the East; therefore, if it was indeed Venus, it can only have been the Morning Star. (56) Frazer further surmised that "if that were so [then] it was the Morning Star which guided the wise men of the East to Bethlehem, the hallowed spot which heard, in the language of Jerome, the weeping of the infant Christ and the lament for Adonis." (57) The Wise Men, therefore, may have been going towards Bethlehem to celebrate the festival of Adonis when Providence intervened and altered forever the course of their journey. Indirect support for recognizing in the "Star of Bethlehem" the planet Venus may be found in the traditional account of the birth of Jesus which was said to have taken place at early dawn; and as late as the end of the nineteenth century the Nativity was celebrated in Bethlehem and Rome very early in the morning. Venus as the Morning Star would of course have risen early in the morning; and Holzer claims that the original Greek version of Matthew dealing with the Magi and the Star could be translated as "We have seen his star rising." (58) That Herod knew nothing of the Star is not surprising since the movements of Venus would have been observed only by trained astrologers with a given purpose. The late John Myers also concluded that the "Star of Bethlehem" was Venus as the Morning Star. But, he believed that the gospel account of the unusual movement of the "Star of Bethlehem" was, in fact, archetypal. In other words, Venus did not leave its orbit and travel across country to hover over Bethlehem. Rather, "in the actual physical sense, the Star of Bethlehem' did not exist! - and the theologians and the astronomers are wasting their time when they speculate and calculate as to what it might have been. The Star of Bethlehem' existed only in the minds of men - both a mnemonic echo of the time when Venus did indeed move irregularly and the legacy of an earlier concept that celestial prodigies heralded the birth of kings." (59)
[FACE ON 8-POINTED STAR]
_According to another apocryphal tradition "the star that guided [the Magi] to Bethlehem had the face of a child, and in fact was the angel seen by the shepherds." (60) Further, when the Magi "sat down beside David's Well of Bethlehem to refresh themselves ... they saw the star reflected in the clear water of the well." (61) A precedent for seeing the face of an important personage imprinted upon a star had already been established long before the time of Jesus for "on the eighth day after the passing of Moses, the Israelites looked up at the sky and recognized the face of their leader in the sun." (62) Finally, the Star of the East was linked to the prophecy of Balaam; (63) and Lundy (64) sees in the eight-pointed star, depicted on ancient Mesopotamian reliefs, the Star of Balaam as well as a representation of the planet Venus. (65) In Early Christian art, the Christ Child is depicted with the eight-pointed star directly overhead which "signifies the union of Heaven and earth, God and man, in the Incarnation" and is sometimes called the star of Venus. (66) Birthdays and Festival Days: The Days of March and April. The date of Jesus' birth has no reliable traditional support, though there were, in antiquity, a few scholarly attempts to fix it on April 19, April 20, or May 20. (67) As an aside, it should be mentioned that the festivals of the planet Venus were held in the Spring, (68) and Macrobius wrote that "our ancestors dedicated the month of April to Venus." (69) Hippolytus concluded that the Annunciation had occurred on March 25, believing that Friday the 25th of March was also the day of the Crucifixion. (70) His calculations have not been taken seriously. March, the month of Mars, was a significant month for the Romans. The 19th ...

[JESUS' BLOODLINES]
The Holy Grail
mileswmathis.com/sangreal.pdf
_To get you off those bloodlines, Dan Brown and his precursors waltz in and admit that San Greal, “Holy Grail”, should be Sang Real, “Royal Blood”, indicating not some stupid chalice, but an aristocratic bloodline. So he takes you close to the right answer, as they do, and then diverts you quickly right back out into the bushes, by making you think this has to do with the bloodline of Jesus. Except for one very important fact: Jesus wasn't royal or aristocratic. He was supposed to be the son of a carpenter. You will say his real father was God, which is as royal it gets, but that isn't what “royal” means. It means being from a line of Earthly kings, and Jesus wasn't.
_† To make this diversion as diverting as possible, Brown pulls you into the Catholic Church, the Papacy, the Vatican, and all that glitz. He also pulls in all the King Arthur pageantry, double dipping you in mythology as far away from Judaism and the Phoenicians as possible. No one but my readers would ever think of the Jews when they think of the Papacy or King Arthur, much less the Phoenicians. So the secret remains safe. And, as we saw with many other mysteries, including the fake JFK assassination, when lie #1 isn't working or is getting old, it is time to create lie #2. They always back up the fake mainstream story with a second alternative story, and maybe a third and fourth one. So when people started questioning the grail story, they came up with a “body or tomb of Mary Magdalene” story. That was just sexy enough to do the job, and do the job it did. A lot of people bought it. They brilliantly tied that into the bloodline story, since Jesus supposedly had a child with Magdalene, creating the Godly bloodline that exists to this day.
_†They tell us Jesus was of the line of David through Joseph, but Jesus got no blood from Joseph. We are told Joseph was legally the father of Jesus by Jewish law, but this isn't a matter of law, it is a matter of nature. Jesus got no genetic material from Joseph. Mary was not in the line of David. You will say she was in the line of Levi and Aaron, but that's all as maybe, and even if she were, that line hadn't been noble for a long long time. One of the points of the gospels is that Jesus wasn't a priest or noble of any other kind, being of lowly birth. Which is why his statements were so shocking. Being a carpenter, he wasn't supposed to be questioning anything. And besides, the ones pushing Jesus in the line of David hardest are Jews. Just do a Google search on it if you don't believe me. Jewish sites come up first. It is as if they are claiming Jesus, which, given history, is pretty odd.