"The Little Drummer Boy" rocks. I'm anteing Bing Crosby and David Bowie. What've you got?
I will grant that the classic version is hardly the best, and Bing and Dave's isn't either. Brave Combo's is nice, and I wish I could track down the one that I heard the other night that put a break in my voice.
There's a lot of story packed into a few lines. If I ever write anything half as good, I'll be proud.
It's also got a pretty good take on Christmas: Give what you've got. Now, you could argue that that's an artist's take on Christmas, because the adult Jesus seemed to think you should be giving your goods as well as your art. But the "poor boy" line makes it pretty clear that was about all that the kid had. Maybe he didn't give as much as the old woman at the temple with two mites, but he did pretty good.
Having said all that, I have to admit that I suspect the baby Jesus's smile meant he had gas. But I hope no one tells that to the drummer boy.
Mayakda, there's some question about the Roman custom for baptism in the fourth century. What's most interesting to me is that the bishop who baptized Constantine on his deathbed was an Arian.
Also, my apologies for being unclear. Constantine didn't get rid of Mithraism; he helped it merge with Christianity. The Edict of Milan didn't make Christianity the official religion or get rid of paganism; it just made the official day of worship come into line with the Mithraic choice. Constantine's coins still read "Sol Invicto comiti" and he kept the Mithraic title of High Priest. You can find a fair look at Constantine and Christianity in Wikipedia's Constantine article.
The merger of Mithraism and Christianity helped me understand something that had always baffled me about Catholicism. Jesus said, "Call no man Father." Given that, how do you explain the Pope? Once you know that the highest Mithraic rank was Pater, it becomes clear.
Teresa and Jo, no flags here. Just passing along what I've read. My concept of God is big enough to include the possibility that the Catholics have it right, and part of getting it right was using the best bits from other sources.
Mayakda, to be precise, Constantine didn't convert until he was on his death bed. Whether that meant he saw the light then or he just wanted the priests to quit bugging him, who knows? Before then, he essentially said, "Look, Mithra and Jesus are names for the one god, so you Christians go worship on the Invincible Sun's day and quit disturbing my empire."
The "many names for the one god" approach also goes back to the Persians. Cyrus, a Zoroastrian that the Bible calls a Messiah, could tell the Jews to build (or rebuild, depending on your take) a temple to the one true god under the name of Yahweh, and he could tell the Babylonians that he conquered them to restore the rule of Marduk, another name of the one god-- It's definitely smart politics. And good religion, if you ignore the element of force.
Jakob, as the guy who's Buffyed out, I'm glad to answer your question: Halos, like much Greek, Jewish, and Christian iconography, were borrowed from the Persians, the world power before Alexander and no slouches through their Parthian incarnation. Ahura Mazda was identified with light, so the halo could've come from the monotheistic phase of the religion, or, more likely, it's a sign of being blessed by Mithra, the sun god who became Ahura Mazda's son and helper in the later polytheistic phase. (Don't get me going on Mithra's virgin birth and his rising from the dead, or the existence of Spenta Mainyu, the holy spirit who completed the later Zoroastrian trinity, or the presence in Rome of a male Mithraic cult in Rome that was led by a "Father," or Pope, or Constantine's interesting merger of the worship of Mithra as Sol Invictus and Jesus.
Remember, God works in mysterious ways.
I think "Pentatookies" is very funny, and it is where most of the illiteralists go wrong, but it's a bit insulting to the folks who find a lot of good in the Torah. Remember that a lot of Jesus's best material comes from Leviticus, like 19:18, "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
I think we're talking about members of Christians Against Jesus, people who worship Christ and think Jesus's ideas were flat out commie nonsense that can be ignored, thanks be to God for sending Paul to straighten it all out.
I understand people wanting to keep the best of Paul. But the best of Paul follows logically from Jesus. Thomas Jefferson's Bible works surprisingly well.
Part of what I like about "christianist" is that it moves the named person further from Jesus; it's a follower of a follower of christ.
Anna in Cairo, all three of the post-Zoroastrian religions kept their interest in an End Time and a returned savior (from the Zoroastrians' saoshyant) to varying degrees. Some people think Pharisee comes from Farsi, so Pharisees were essentially Persionists. Which explains why the Bible's list of Messiahs/Christs includes a Persian king.
And two bits of knowledge that I wish everyone had for the Biblical abortion and gay debates:
1. A fetus is not a person; see Exodus 21:22-25, in which the punishment for causing a miscarriage that the parents do not want is significantly less than the punishment for killing.
2. The sin of Sodom was not homosexuality; see Ezekiel 16:49: "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy."
Mike should quit writing games and start writing sermons. A fair number of Unitarian Universalist congregations would snap him up in a second.
I've also got to protest the use of "Pharisee." Modern Judaism, like modern Christianity, is a child of Phariseeism and a rejection of the ritual-obsession of the Sadduccees (which up-their-fundament Christianists seem to admire, excepting the Sadduccee rejection of Zoroastrian elements like a loving God and life after death. There are good arguments that if the historical Jesus was part of any of the major Jewish movements two thousand years ago, he was a Pharisee. (I don't favor that theory, but I agree that it's a strong one.) Compare Jesus's teachings with Hillel, if you wish. It's worth noting that the Biblical complaints against Pharisees can be interpreted as being directed at specific Pharisees. When Jesus was in a ranting mood, hypocrites were always high in his list.
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