| User | rouge wave | | Topic | the Jesus fish | | Message | In response to Jennifer’s thread on Jesus ("do you know him"), I would like to have my own so that I can discuss topics which delve deeper into items I feel are a bit more important (though they may seem innocent at first glimpse).
A book I will make many references to is called "The Hiram Key" – a book that focuses mainly on the origin on Freemasonry but the two authors, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, who are both Freemasons, did their research and couldn’t ignore the facts they’ve uncovered during.
I would like to point out that there is a difference between ’popular belief,’ ’fact’ and ’repeatedly stated as fact.’ There have been arguments for hundreds of years on what is what and I’m not sure if logic has improved over those years but I want to stress that logic is going to be a very important part in this debate (and personal attachment to these issues is not).
To sum up briefly my standpoint on Jesus before getting to the real point, I think that there were two men named/dubbed Jesus (Hebrew for messiah, roughly translated to our Joshua) – and one of those men was a priestly fellow, the other a kingly one. From my understanding, the priestly one (the son of god) was let go and the kingly was crucified in his stead.
I would also like to point out that these people of our ancient times (mainly the Jews) would name or call their ’saviors’ Jesus. To them, it was just another word I imagine much like we would say, "Oh, he’s a saint" or even "good man."
I’m sure everyone knows what the "Jesus fish" symbol is, or what it looks like. One particular story in the book, told by one of the authors on one of his dives he took in the Sharm el Sheik in Egypt, they mention the term "nasrani" – what Arabs called Christians. The location of the dive was called Ras Nasrani, which later he asked his Arab guide what this name meant (seeing that the Nasoreans were a big part in their research, words bearing similarities need be asked about). He stated that Ras translated to "head" or "point" and that "Nasrani" was a word for lots of little fish – which then would mean that people used to refer (or still do) to Christians as the "little fish." (And over the course of reading this book I find hard to believe that at some point the Christian faith was the underdog.)
This may only add to the meaning behind the symbol. I think it also has something to do with the ’fisher of men’ thing the Church has going on (that religious people round up people for heaven or something). When I think of holiness or cleansing I often think of water, water being some important aspect to religion (this my overall impression).
Also from the book, they state that "Peter and John (whom they mean I don’t know) were high-ranking members of the Nasorean sect who recruited others and therefore became known as ’fishermen’ in recognition of their recruitment activities rather than as a literal reference to trade." They go on to say that the Dead Sea has no real fish to actually fish for...so really it was a symbolic term but later the authors of the New Testament, they state, shifted the location to a more fish-abundant waters – could this sort of thing have happened more than one occasion in the recording of our biblical existences?
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| User | Blue Monk | 2006-09-08 | | | Subject | untitled | | Message | It sounds more like they did two years of odd research than two odd years of research. |
| User | rouge wave | 2006-09-07 | | | Subject | credit | | Message | Right, but these two seem trustworthy enough. One’s an electrical engineer and the other is in graphic desi--oh, I see what you’re saying. I imagine these two are horribly wrong then, ye old pup.
This is why I guess I said that logic would take a large part into this debate - although for your defense these two authors seem to hate Christians for some reason (near the beginning of the book they even call their faith ’the faith of fools’ - and I wouldn’t go as far as calling somebody a fool just because they latch onto a comforting and mostly sound belief). But seeing how these two did some odd years of research, they claim, and seeing how they are most likely Brittish and not American (you can’t really trust any of those damn yanks), I think I put a little bit of faith in them myself - and is that any different than believing any other book any other man has written over the past 2,000 years? You can most likely prove these two wrong in today’s world and I would rather have stock in somebody like that rather than believe something that can be way off the mark (but it feels good to imagine that it isn’t).
Now blue ole boy, you do seem like a smart one, and being my elder I’ll have to defer to you a bit and in return I hope you can put up with some of my shenanigans, but we’re talking more about history then anything (I hope) and people - mass civilizations of peoples - tend to like to pride themselves on their own history. I think one of my points being that people will change facts that were relevent enough for one culture but not for another just because they want their race of men to look alright or better.
The changing location of these two men (Peter and John) may seem obscure enough and even unimportant but if these sorts of things happen who knows what sort of beliefs are around today that have been adopted and are actually out of their original context. Something about Abraham killing his son? Or was that God...and then it was Yahweh to this group, but he wasn’t invented yet...oh we could go in circles for the rest of our lives I suppose.
Since I can’t spend my life at the moment visiting and reading/deciphering old documents and texts I’m going to have to at least believe a little bit of what somebody who has said they did all this. |
| User | Blue Monk | 2006-09-07 | | | Subject | untitled | | Message | If I called myself a member of some long lost secret brotherhood and being so qualified, I wrote a book to expose as wrong most of that which has been believed for some 2,000 years or more, would you buy my book and maybe even believe some of it? People do it all the time now days, just as they have continued to do so over the entire period in question. |
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