Were the New Testament Magi Zoroastrians?

Our recent post,

Magi’s Star of Reference to Life of Jesus Christ

 

at :
http://westerncivilisationamaic.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/magis-star-of-reference-to-life-of.html?showComment=1405056099955has drawn the following from good friend, John R. Salverda (July 10, 2014 at 10:21 PM):

 

What? No mention of my favorite extra-Biblical source for the visit by the famous Astrologers. Allow me my two cents on the subject;

The Magi are the well known priests of Zoroaster. We learn of the role that the Magi played in the birth of Cyrus (another Hebrew "Messiah" Isa. 45:1-4 and presumably an adherent of the religion of Zoroastrianism) from Herodotus ("Histories." Book 1, Pages 107-129). Zoroaster is also credited with predicting the birth of Christ in the Apocryphal first Gospel of the INFANCY of JESUS CHRIST, Chapter III, Verse 1. ("And it came to pass, when the Lord Jesus was born at Bethlehem, a city of Judea in the time of Herod the King; the wise men came from the East to Jerusalem, according to the prophecy of Zoradascht [Zoroaster], and brought with them offerings: namely, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and worshiped him, and offered to him their gifts." This gospel was attested to and used by the Gnostics as early as the second century AD.) Certainly this (Zoroaster's) Magi priesthood, who adored the "King of the Jews," helped to direct the event, just as surely as the LORD held the right hand of his Messiah Cyrus, to subdue the nations. (Compare also the role of Merlin the "Magi-cian" in the birth of king Arthur, the archetypal "King of Kings" among the Britons.)

AMAIC Response:

You John, surprisingly,with your penchant for detecting Jewish (Hebrew/Israelite) originals underlying many western myths and legends, the theme also of this very site of ours:

Lost Cultural Foundations of Western Civilisation

with its corresponding eastern version:

Lost Cultural Foundations of Eastern Civilisation

http://easterncivilisationamaic.blogspot.com.au/

do not appear to be impressed with – as mentioned in our Magi article - those Syro-Arabic legends according to which Zoroaster was the biblical Jewish scribe, Baruch, a friend of the prophet Jeremiah. According to this handy piece from Wikipedia on the matter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_ben_Neriah):

Baruch ben Neriah

Some Christian legends (especially from Syria and Arabia) identify Baruch with Zoroaster, and give much information concerning him. Baruch, angry because the gift of prophecy had been denied him, and on account of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, left Palestine to found the religion of Zoroaster. The prophecy of the birth of Jesus from a virgin, and of his adoration by the Magi, is also ascribed to Baruch-Zoroaster.[24] It is difficult to explain the origin of this curious identification of a prophet with a magician, such as Zoroaster was held to be, among the Jews, Christians, and Arabs. De Sacy[25] explains it on the ground that in Arabic the name of the prophet Jeremiah is almost identical with that of the city of Urmiah, where, it is said, Zoroaster lived. However, this may be, the Jewish legend mentioned above (under Baruch in Rabbinical Literature), according to which the Ethiopian in Jer. xxxviii. 7 is undoubtedly identical with Baruch, is connected with this Arabic–Christian legend. As early as the Clementine "Recognitiones" (iv. 27), Zoroaster was believed to be a descendant of Ham; and, according to Gen. x. 6, Cush, the Ethiopian, is a son of Ham. According to the "Recognitiones",[26] the Persians believed that Zoroaster had been taken into heaven in a chariot ("ad cœlum vehiculo sublevatum"); and according to the Jewish legend, the above-mentioned Ethiopian was transported alive into paradise,[27] an occurrence that, like the translation of Elijah,[28] must have taken place by means of a "vehiculum." Another reminiscence of the Jewish legend is found in Baruch-Zoroaster's words concerning Jesus: "He shall descend from my family",[29] since, according to the Haggadah, Baruch was a priest; and Maria, the mother of Jesus, was of priestly family.

If Baruch were a wise (see Baruch 4, “Wisdom is the book of God's commandments, the Law that will last forever. All who hold onto her will live, but those who abandon her will die”, etc.) Jewish scribe, in Babylon (Baruch 1:3 “Baruch read the words of this book to Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah … and to all the people, small and great, all who lived in Babylon by the river Sud”), contemporaneous with the prophet Daniel, as we know he was, then he may well have known about Daniel’s “Messianic Prophecy”(Daniel 9:24-27), which Magi Star seekers invariably suggest was an extra factor assisting the New Testament Magi. This Daniel, we have tentatively identified, in turn, with the Benjaminite high official at Susa, Mordecai, in:

Belshazzar’s Feast in the Book of Esther?

http://www.academia.edu/5365514/Belshazzars_Feast_in_the_Book_of_Esther

Now, given Baruch’s obvious importance, his wisdom, and his contemporaneity with Daniel, and his sometime Babylonian location, then it is not beyond the realms of possibility that Baruch-was-Daniel-was-the-receiver-of-the-Messianic-prophecy,“predicting the birth of Christ”. If this be the case, then it would no longer be “difficult to explain the origin of this curious identification of a prophet with a magician, such as Zoroaster was held to be”, given that Daniel had been placed over all of the wise men in Babylon (Daniel 2:48): “[Nebuchednezzar] made [Daniel] ruler over the entire province of Babylon and placed him in charge of all its wise men”.

The Lost Cultural Foundations apparently extend to the East, as well as to the West.

Book of Daniel “very dangerous” for China’s Communist leaders

China on course to become ‘world’s most Christian nation’ within 15 years

The number of Christians in Communist China is growing so steadily that it by 2030 it could have more churchgoers than America

 

Christian congregations in particular have skyrocketed since churches began reopening when Chairman Mao’s death in 1976 Photo: ALAMY

 

….

 

By Tom Phillips, Liushi, Zhejiang province

2:00PM BST 19 Apr 2014

It is said to be China’s biggest church and on Easter Sunday thousands of worshippers will flock to this Asian mega-temple to pledge their allegiance – not to the Communist Party, but to the Cross.

The 5,000-capacity Liushi church, which boasts more than twice as many seats as Westminster Abbey and a 206ft crucifix that can be seen for miles around, opened last year with one theologian declaring it a “miracle that such a small town was able to build such a grand church”.

The £8 million building is also one of the most visible symbols of Communist China’s breakneck conversion as it evolves into one of the largest Christian congregations on earth.

“It is a wonderful thing to be a follower of Jesus Christ. It gives us great confidence,” beamed Jin Hongxin, a 40-year-old visitor who was admiring the golden cross above Liushi’s altar in the lead up to Holy Week.

“If everyone in China believed in Jesus then we would have no more need for police stations. There would be no more bad people and therefore no more crime,” she added.
 

Related Articles

• Christians form human shield around church in ‘China’s Jerusalem’ after demolition threat04 Apr 2014
• David Cameron says Christians should be ‘more evangelical’16 Apr 2014

Officially, the People’s Republic of China is an atheist country but that is changing fast as many of its 1.3 billion citizens seek meaning and spiritual comfort that neither communism nor capitalism seem to have supplied.

Christian congregations in particular have skyrocketed since churches began reopening when Chairman Mao’s death in 1976 signalled the end of the Cultural Revolution. Less than four decades later, some believe China is now poised to become not just the world’s number one economy but also its most numerous Christian nation. “By my calculations China is destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon,” said Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule. “It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people are prepared for this dramatic change.” China’s Protestant community, which had just one million members in 1949, has already overtaken those of countries more commonly associated with an evangelical boom. In 2010 there were more than 58 million Protestants in China compared to 40 million in Brazil and 36 million in South Africa, according to the Pew Research Centre’s Forum on Religion and Public Life. Prof Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, believes that number will swell to around 160 million by 2025. That would likely put China ahead even of the United States, which had around 159 million Protestants in 2010 but whose congregations are in decline. By 2030, China’s total Christian population, including Catholics, would exceed 247 million, placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the United States as the largest Christian congregation in the world, he predicted. “Mao thought he could eliminate religion. He thought he had accomplished this,” Prof Yang said. “It’s ironic – they didn’t. They actually failed completely.” Like many Chinese churches, the church in the town of Liushi, 200 miles south of Shanghai in Zhejiang province, has had a turbulent history. It was founded in 1886 after William Edward Soothill, a Yorkshire-born missionary and future Oxford University professor, began evangelising local communities. But by the late 1950s, as the region was engulfed by Mao’s violent anti-Christian campaigns, it was forced to close. Liushi remained shut throughout the decade of the Cultural Revolution that began in 1966, as places of worship were destroyed across the country. Since it reopened in 1978 its congregation has gone from strength to strength as part of China’s officially sanctioned Christian church – along with thousands of others that have accepted Communist Party oversight in return for being allowed to worship. Today it has 2,600 regular churchgoers and holds up to 70 baptisms each year, according to Shi Xiaoli, its 27-year-old preacher. The parish’s revival reached a crescendo last year with the opening of its new 1,500ft mega-church, reputedly the biggest in mainland China. “Our old church was small and hard to find,” said Ms Shi. “There wasn’t room in the old building for all the followers, especially at Christmas and at Easter. The new one is big and eye-catching.” The Liushi church is not alone. From Yunnan province in China’s balmy southwest to Liaoning in its industrial northeast, congregations are booming and more Chinese are thought to attend Sunday services each week than do Christians across the whole of Europe. A recent study found that online searches for the words “Christian Congregation”and “Jesus” far outnumbered those for “The Communist Party” and “Xi Jinping”, China’s president. Among China’s Protestants are also many millions who worship at illegal underground “house churches”, which hold unsupervised services – often in people’s homes – in an attempt to evade the prying eyes of the Communist Party. Such churches are mostly behind China’s embryonic missionary movement – a reversal of roles after the country was for centuries the target of foreign missionaries. Now it is starting to send its own missionaries abroad, notably into North Korea, in search of souls. “We want to help and it is easier for us than for British, South Korean or American missionaries,” said one underground church leader in north China who asked not to be named. The new spread of Christianity has the Communist Party scratching its head. “The child suddenly grew up and the parents don’t know how to deal with the adult,” the preacher, who is from China’s illegal house-church movement, said. Some officials argue that religious groups can provide social services the government cannot, while simultaneously helping reverse a growing moral crisis in a land where cash, not Communism, has now become king. They appear to agree with David Cameron, the British prime minister, who said last week that Christianity could help boost Britain’s “spiritual, physical and moral” state. Ms Shi, Liushi’s preacher, who is careful to describe her church as “patriotic”, said: “We have two motivations: one is our gospel mission and the other is serving society. Christianity can also play a role in maintaining peace and stability in society. Without God, people can do as they please.” Yet others within China’s leadership worry about how the religious landscape might shape its political future, and its possible impact on the Communist Party’s grip on power, despite the clause in the country’s 1982 constitution that guarantees citizens the right to engage in “normal religious activities”. As a result, a close watch is still kept on churchgoers, and preachers are routinely monitored to ensure their sermons do not diverge from what the Party considers acceptable. In Liushi church a closed circuit television camera hangs from the ceiling, directly in front of the lectern. “They want the pastor to preach in a Communist way. They want to train people to practice in a Communist way,” said the house-church preacher, who said state churches often shunned potentially subversive sections of the Bible. The Old Testament book in which the exiled Daniel refuses to obey orders to worship the king rather than his own god is seen as “very dangerous”, the preacher added. Such fears may not be entirely unwarranted. Christians’ growing power was on show earlier this month when thousands flocked to defend a church in Wenzhou, a city known as the “Jerusalem of the East”, after government threats to demolish it. Faced with the congregation’s very public show of resistance, officials appear to have backed away from their plans, negotiating a compromise with church leaders. “They do not trust the church, but they have to tolerate or accept it because the growth is there,” said the church leader. “The number of Christians is growing – they cannot fight it. They do not want the 70 million Christians to be their enemy.” The underground leader church leader said many government officials viewed religion as “a sickness” that needed curing, and Prof Yang agreed there was a potential threat. The Communist Party was “still not sure if Christianity would become an opposition political force” and feared it could be used by “Western forces to overthrow the Communist political system”, he said. Churches were likely to face an increasingly “intense” struggle over coming decade as the Communist Party sought to stifle Christianity’s rise, he predicted. “There are people in the government who are trying to control the church. I think they are making the last attempt to do that.”

 

….

 

Taken from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10776023/China-on-course-to-become-worlds-most-Christian-nation-within-15-years.html

Eastern Sage, Ahikar (Ahiqar), Amalgamated with Aesop



For complete article, see: http://www.academia.edu/3209219/Akicharos_vol._3_The_Tale_of_Ahiqar_and_the_Aesop

....

1. Ahiqar, Aesop and the Vita -Author

There was a series of similarities between the figures of Ahiqar and Aesop, probably originating in a common repository of narrative motifs and gnomicmaterial widespread in the Eastern Mediterranean. These analogies facilitated comparison and rapprochement of the two heroes, as soon as Ahiqar’s story became known to the Greek world in early Hellenistic times. Both Ahiqar and Aesop were narrators of fables, using them for admonitory as well as censorious purposes. Ahiqar addressed such parables to his adoptive son, in order to teach him wisdom and correct behaviour (thus in the version of Elephantine) or to reprove him for his perfidy (thus in later versions). Correspondingly, Aesop employed his fables as a vehicle of political advice to the Samians or of blame against the Delphians and their insidious accusations. Further, both Ahiqar and Aesop appeared in the role of the innocent man falling victim to a treacherous scheme, unjustly persecuted and condemned on false charges. Thus, both underwent a kind of “death and resurrection” experience: Ahiqar was hidden in an underground crypt, much like a grave, until he was rehabilitated and returned to light again. Aesop was put to death, but his soul came back to life. In both cases, justice was restored in the end, and the people responsible for the hero’s persecution(respectively Nadin and the Delphians) were punished.
 

....

“Ginzberg furnishes substantial evidence that Mordecai and Haman were both Jews who knew each other well”.



 



Power struggle between Jews

Clever Queen Esther takes a chance and manages to create harmony.

EUGENE KAELLIS

Purim is based on the Book of Esther, the most esoteric book in the Hebrew Testament. Accepting a literal interpretation of the book is impossible. It is laden with evident exaggerations and inventions that defy what is known of Persian history and conventions. Its hidden meaning can be uncovered only by combining a knowledge of Persian practices during the Babylonian Captivity, the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Great, his Edict (sixth century BCE) and Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews which, despite its name, contains a great deal of relevant and credible history.

Using these sources, one can arrive at a plausible interpretation completely in accord with historically valid information. Esther, it turns out, describes an entirely intra-Jewish affair set in the Persian Empire, with the two major antagonists as factional leaders: Mordecai, whose followers advocate rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple, and Haman, also a Jew, whose assimilationist adherents oppose the project.

Ginzberg furnishes substantial evidence that Mordecai and Haman were both Jews who knew each other well: they were co-butlers at a royal feast and journeyed together to India to put down a rebellion against Persia. Moreover, Haman's mother had a Hebrew name and his descendants are said to have taught Torah in Akiva's academy.

The multi-ethnic Persian Empire had significant religious freedom and communal authority, as exemplified by the Edict of Cyrus, permitting Jews to return to Judah and rebuild their Temple, destroyed by the Babylonians, and allowing the inclusion of members of various ethnic and religious groups under Persian rule, offering them some representation and influence at the royal court. However, it is untrue that Mordecai or Esther achieved the high positions attributed to them in the book. Queens and chief ministers always had to have impeccably Persian ancestry. More likely, Mordecai was a spokesperson for much of the Jewish community and Esther, a harem consort.

In the Persian Empire the king's harem typically had ethnic "representatives." Vashti, Esther's predecessor, was a member of the Hamanite faction. In a typically irreverent manner, she had forced her Jewish handmaidens to violate the Sabbath. After Vashti's dismissal, widespread rebellion and Jewish inter-factional fighting flared up, calmed only by Mordecai's elevation and the appointment of Esther, who, in a measure of intrigue, initially conceals her ethnic and factional identification. Her original name was Hebrew, viz., Hadassah; Esther is Persian, derived from Astarte or Ishtar.

The book states that Mordecai first discovered a plot to kill Ahasuerus, the king. It is more likely that he was apprised by Esther who, being in the harem, a traditional centre of intrigue and espionage, would have picked up this intelligence. A more plausible explanation is that the incident was a conspiracy arranged by Mordecai, the two allegedly guilty harem eunuchs becoming dupes in a plot designed to be exposed in order to discredit the Hamanite faction and win favor for Mordecai and his followers.

Nevertheless, Haman initially gains the upper hand by convincing Ahasuerus that Mordecai's faction threatens the king's hegemony, an argument given credence by the plan of the pro-Temple faction to construct a wall around the rebuilt Temple, perhaps to defend against Persian armies after the Jews had declared their independence. Haman also probably bribes the king with promises of a share of the plunder expropriated from the wealth of the pro-Temple faction after its members are killed.

After Haman's appointment, when he and the king sat down for a drink, "Susa was perplexed," the text states, indicating that the Jews of Susa, a city with a large Mordecai-supporting faction, were outraged that someone they considered a heretic would henceforth officially advise the king regarding the Jewish community.

As Haman puts his plan in motion, Mordecai warns Esther, and the pro-Temple Jews demonstrate their solidarity with her. During the three days of fasting, while Esther prepares to petition the king, Mordecai is busy collecting a counter-bribe, referred to as "relief and deliverance ... from another quarter," which he had earlier promised Esther while trying to assuage her fears about her own safety following the disclosure of her true allegiance.

The Mordecai faction succeeds and the tolerant but venal king switches his support. Esther gathers information on Haman's collaborators and denounces him. In a staged event in the royal apartment, with the king's co-operation, she frames Haman on an assault charge, providing Ahasuerus with a face-saving device to explain the dismissal and subsequent execution of someone he had so recently elevated.

Ahasuerus, now convinced that the pro-Temple faction does not threaten him with its walled city plans, provides help from forces he had formerly promised to Haman, allowing the Mordecaite Jews to eliminate the Hamanites, but keeping his well-greased hands out of the more violent aspects of the conflict.

The book states repeatedly that the pro-Temple faction members kept no plunder derived from the defeat of their rivals, indicating that this benefit of their triumph went to Ahasuerus. The story goes on to declare that, with the victory of the Mordecai faction, "many people of the country declared themselves Jews, for the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them." Why would ordinary Persians or Babylonians, now part of the Persian Empire, fear Jews to the point of embracing a minority religion in their own country? It is more reasonable to assume that the now religiously enthusiastic Jews who had become fearful of Mordecai were assimilated Jews who had identified themselves as Persians and who had formerly allied themselves with the Hamanite faction or had previously faltered in their allegiance to the pro-Temple faction.

Purim is at once the least and the most profound of Jewish holidays. The Talmud tells us that even after the Messiah comes and the mandated holidays of Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot are no longer celebrated, Purim will be retained. Why? Because the story reminds us that, even when obscured by bizarre circumstances, there is a continuous presence of God, often in the guise of "chance," which explains why Purim is known as the Feast of Lots.

The mood in the synagogue celebration of Purim is one of noisy revelry, even inebriation, and self-ridicule as if the participants somehow know that the book's story is a cover up for a series of dramatic and fateful events and they are winking at it and themselves.

Dr. Eugene Kaellis is a retired academic living in New Westminster.

....

Taken from: http://www.jewishindependent.ca/Archives/Mar05/archives05Mar18-07.html