DAFFY BLEW GEAR... er SLAPPY BREW FEAR... er PAPPY SLEW DEER

Ah, well, ain't you glad this last month or so are finally over, and we can return to reality? I was thinking just that this morning as I was driving to a sort of meeting place and very tired and wishing that this December holiday month had never begun. But, you know, kids will be kids, no matter what age they haven't grown up to, and those unable to outgrow their childhoods will always need the little Xmas fix to keep the idea of their supernatural superbeing alive in their empty heads....

Whoops, I know, a little rough on the grownup tikes. If only everybody could leave their childhood beliefs in nonexistent entities behind when they grow up!


MYTHS TO LET GO OF AND TO GO BEYOND

I've already posted several lists of ways in which Christianity is no different than other mythological religious beliefs in the prehistoric past. The lists have come from several sources. Now here's another man heard from, the expert witness on mythological religions of the Twentieth Century.

MYTHS TO LIVE BY by Joseph Campbell
Chapter One: The Impact of Science on Myth p. 7

[Open quote] Already in Shakespeare’s day, when Sir Walter Raleigh arrived in America and saw here all the new animals unknown on the other side, he understood as a master mariner that it would have been absolutely impossible for Noah to have packed examples of every species on earth into any ark, no matter how large. The Bible legend of the Flood was untrue: a theory that could not be “factualized.” And we today (to make matters worse) are dating the earliest appearance of manlike creatures on this earth over a million years earlier than the Biblical date for God’s creation of the world. The great paleolithic caves of Europe are from circa 30,000 B.c.; the beginnings of agriculture, 10,000 B.C. or so, and the first substantial towns about 7,000. Yet Cain, the eldest son of Adam, the first man, is declared in Genesis 4:2 and 4:17 to have been “a tiller of the ground” and the builder of a city known as Enoch in the land of Nod, east of Eden. The Biblical “theory” has again been proved false, and “they have found the bones!”

They have found also the buildings—and these do not corroborate Scripture, either. For example, the period of Egyptian history supposed to have been of the Exodus—of Ramses II (1301—1234 n.c.), or perhaps Merneptah (1234—1220) or Seti II (1220—1200)—is richly represented in architectural and hieroglyphic remains, yet there is no notice anywhere of anything like those famous Biblical plagues, no record anywhere of anything even comparable. Moreover, as other records tell, Bedouin Hebrews, the “Habiru,” were already invading Canaan during the reign of Ikhnaton (1377—1358), a century earlier than the Ramses date.

The long and the short of it is simply that the Hebrew texts from which all these popular Jewish legends of Creation, Exodus, Forty Years in the Desert, and Conquest of Canaan are derived were not composed by “God” or even by anyone named Moses, but are of various dates and authors, all much later than was formerly supposed. The first five books of the Old Testament (Torah) were assembled only after the period of Ezra (fourth century B.C.), and the documents of which it was fashioned date all the way from the ninth century B.C. (the so-called J and E texts) to the second or so (the P, or “priestly” writings). One notices, for example, that there are two accounts of the FloocL From the first we learn that Noah brought “two living things of every sort” into the Ark (Genesis 6:19—20; p text, post-Ezra), and from the second, “seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean” (Genesis 7:2—3; J text, ca. 800 B.C. ± 50). We also find two stories of Creation, the earlier in Genesis 2, the later in Genesis 1. In 2, a garden has been planted and a man created to tend it; next the animals are created, and finally (as in dream) Mother Eve is drawn from Adam’s rib. In Genesis 1, on the other hand, God, alone with the cosmic waters, says, “Let there be light,” etc., and, stage by stage, the universe comes into being: first, light; and the sun, three days later; then, vegetables, animals, and finally mankind, male and female together. Genesis 1 is of about the fourth century B.C. (the period of Aristotle), and 2, of the ninth or eighth (Hesiod’s time).

Comparative cultural studies have now demonstrated beyond question that similar mythic tales are to be found in every quarter of this earth. When Cortes and)j his Catholic Spaniards arrived in Aztec Mexico, they immediately recognized in the local religion so many parallels to their own True Faith that they were hard put to explain the fact. There were towering pyramidal temples, representing, stage by stage, like Dante’s Mountain of Purgatory, degrees of elevation of the spirit. There were thirteen heavens, each with its appropriate gods or angels; nine hells, of suffering souls. There was a High God above all, who was beyond all human thought and imaging. There was even an incarnate Saviour, associated with a serpent, born of a virgin, who had died and was resurrected, one of whose symbols was a cross. [Close quote]