Ron, a regular reader of Just Genesis has made an important and well-informed observation which I would like to explore further. He wrote in a comment here:
[My] theory…. depends entirely on whether or not gold and silver are, in Egyptian mythology (or, more generally, in the Afroasiatic worldview) associated with the sun and the moon. I don't know if they are.
But if they are, then perhaps the two metals in the Zech. 6:11 crown symbolize the eyes of Horus.
Or perhaps they symbolize sun worship at the western end of the Afroasiatic dominion and moon worship at the eastern end, mentioned in one of your earlier posts ("Was Abraham a Pagan?"), which may suggest rule over the whole Afroasiatic dominion, from east to west. At that time, wouldn't that be the entire known world?
We begin by addressing Ron’s last observation about the western and eastern extensions of the vast Afro-Asiatic Dominion. Ron recognizes that there are 2 creations stories and 2 flood stories and that they come from different areas of the Dominion, yet they share a common worldview. On the western end, the Sun was regarded as superior to the Moon and the emblem of the Creator. On the eastern end, devotion to the Mood-god Sin was so great that the Moon was regarded as the Sun's equal. The western Afro-Asiatics would have viewed this as heretical (pagan) because it moved the more ancient binary worldview, in which one of the opposites is always greater in some way, to a dualistic worldview in which the opposites are equal in every way.
In the story of Jesus’ birth we find another expression of the western and eastern expectations of God's work. The announcement came to the shepherds from an angelic host at night. The heavens lit up with their glory as they proclaimed that a Son was born in the city of David. To the Magi, who were eastern Afro-Asiatics, the announcement came by the conjunction of the king planet Jupiter with the king star Regelus, in the constellation of Leo. Why God would communicate with the western and eastern Afro-Asiatics differently? Why not send angels to both groups. Wouldn’t that have worked as well?
God honors both traditions in choosing to proclaim the birth of His Son within the contexts of the two groups. The shepherds would have known about the promise of the coming Son because all the old Horite priests were also shepherds. The Magi knew to read the heavens because they were the descendents of those rulers from Judah who expected the Son’s coming to be attended by evidence in the heavens. This knowledge came to them from their Horite priest ancestors. In both cases, events in the heavens communicate with those who are paying attention. In ancient times, the people who payed attention to events in the heavens were priests.
Psalm 19:1 says that the "heavens declare the glory of God." The greatest celestial witness is one which God set to go off in the heavens like an alarm clock on December 24 A.D. 3. That's when Jupiter completed a triple coronation of and aligned with Regelus in the constellation of Leo to produce the brightest heavenly light ever seen. The ancients who expected the Son of God to be born recognized the sign and followed the Bethlehem Star to the Son of God. This event is confirmed by sophisticated astronomical software. (For more on this, go to http://www.bethlehemstar.com/)
Ron asks about the metals silver and gold in Zechariah’s crown. The metals are silver and gold. It is certainly possible that these represent the eyes of Horus, who was called "Horus of the Two Eyes". However, Horus is often portrayed as blind in one eye. That eye was damaged while Horus engaged in mortal combat with this brother Set. The other eye is often shown as red, as in the image of Hathor crowned with the red eye of Horus, a solar image.
In ancient Egyptian symbolism, the right eye is the Eye of Ra, and symbolizes the sun. The left is the Eye of Thoth, and symbolizes the moon. Together they are the Two Eyes of Horus, but one is weaker than the other. This is consistent with the binary worldview of Abraham's Kushite ancestors. If the metals represent the eyes of Horus, the silver would have been the symbol of the Moon and the gold the symbol of the Sun. Now the question remains, which would have been the red eye? To answer that, we should consider Hathor, an image of divine judgment, which is what the red eye appears to symbolize. In Egyptian mythology, Apopis was a water serpent and a symbol of chaos (te'hom). He is slain by Hathor, Ra's cat. This makes sense when we consider that the Sun and Moon appear red when the atmosphere is least pure, that is to say, when the "waters above" are made chaotic. This too would have been observed by the ancient Afro-Asiatic priests.
This takes us back to the story of Jesus' birth. The shepherds would have known the story of the angels coming to Abraham and their announcement of the birth of a son. The angelic beings appeared in the "heat of the day". This contrasts with God's visitation in the garden in "the cool of the day", in which He intended to commune with the Man and the Woman. The latter visit was a hot encounter with God because the angels were on their way to Sodom, a city that stood under divine judgment. The chiastic structure of the Sodom narrative places the destruction of Sodom between the promise of a son for Abraham and the birth of two sons to Lot. The element of the promised Son's birth can be found even in the story of Sodom's destruction.
Thanks for sharing your awesome insight. I love your blog!
ReplyDeleteAlice, you honor me. I agree with Susan; I continue to be fascinated by the diverse threads you weave together.
ReplyDeleteAre familiar with The Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur? I have not read it, but Ward Gasque writes a harsh review of it on Amazon. Do you have an informed opinion of the book? I am trying to decide if it is worth reading.
The central problem with The Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur is his contention that the Horus Myth was universal. It was spread across the vast Afro-Asiatic Dominion, but it is not found far beyond that. What is known beyond that appears to result from God-planted clues in creation which can lead seekers to preliminary knowledge of Christ. Paul speaks of this in Romans, warning that all mankind is without excuse. That said, the Horus Myth only makes sense from the perspective of today when we, as people of faith can look back and see that Horus is the archetype for Christ, the Son of God.
ReplyDeletePlato conceived of archetypes according to which all things in reality are patterned. He didn't invent the idea. He borrowed it from the ancient Egyptians. Here we find the assertion that real things are perceived by the mind, not by sensory perception. In this view, the material world resembles, participates in and aspires to the transcendent Forms. To understand the ancient world, we must begin from this assumption, which is contrary to the prevailing materialism of western society.
Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) observed that for archaic man “real” objects and events are those that imitate, repeat or are patterned upon a celestial archetype. He believed that “the man who has made his choice in favor of a profane life never succeeds in completely doing away with religious behavior.” (The Sacred and the Profane)
C. S. Lewis would have expressed this same belief about sacred myth. Historical accounts can be changed. Families fabricate stories to explain what they wish to deny. Legends elaborate on deeds so that it is sometimes impossible to separate fact from fiction, but sacred myth is lasting. It is the vehicle that carries truth through many ages.
There is another book which should be read with Harpur's book. Gary Greenburg's book The Bible Myth: The African origins of the Jewish People. He makes the case that the monotheistic religion of ancient Israel originated in the Aten cult of ancient Egypt. However, he avoids the Horus myth, the kingdom-building activities of Horites, and the genealogical evidence of Genesis that indicates that the priestly lines of Abraham's people exclusively intermarried because they expected the Son of God to be born from their bloodlines.
Hello again Alice.
ReplyDeleteSorry if I keep posting like crazy, but you have shared a lot of information over the years and I find it really quite fascinating!
While there's a lot of debate over the exact "when" of Jesus's birth, I personally have a hard time believing he was born in winter. Luke 2:8 says that the shepherds were abiding in their fields by night, taking care of their sheep. This isn't something you would be doing in Bethlehem towards the end of December, where temperatures are near freezing.
At 2 or 3 BC (I forget which) there was a very specific astronomical event. The constellation Virgo was on her side with the moon below her feet, and the sun in the midst of her belly. This correlates very nicely with the vision we see in Revelations 12:1,2. The "woman clothed with sun" is the constellation Virgo, and is a symbolic representation of Mary. She "wore a crown of twelve stars"... right above the constellation Virgo is the constellation Leo the Lion, who has 12 visible stars. This is also symbolic representation of Jesus who is called the Lion of Judah who has 12 disciples. The "star" was a very rare alignment of Jupiter and Venus, which are so close together that it would be the brightest thing in the sky at night.
I'll have to look up the video again where I saw this information, but I do know that the astronomical program where are all this is possible is called Stellarium. In the program you can see exactly where the constellations, planets, sun, moon etc., were in position on the exact place on earth, where it would look like. It's really fascinating!
-Tim
The shepherds kept warm in sheep cotes, which are still used in Palestine. See this:
ReplyDeletehttp://biblicalanthropology.blogspot.com/2015/04/sheep-cotes-as-sacred-spaces.html
The Magi were of Judean ancestry and had certain expectations concerning Messiah's appearing. Those expectations appear to have aligned with the miraculous appearance of the star, an astronomical singularity that did indeed involve the constellation of the Lion. See this:
http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2011/12/horite-expectation-and-star-of.html