The Sunday Mail
We have sought to determine the Hebraic religious thought and understanding with regards miraculous conception. It was meant to protect certain truths about historical figure.
We then sought precedents outside Judaism that are impossible to ignore if we are truthful and honest.
So far, miraculous conception has been found to have been a myth in Mithraism, the state religion of the Roman Empire before Christianity. The same has also been found to be a myth in Hinduism and Buddhism (India). In one of the oldest civilisations, ancient Egypt, it was also an existing narrative.
This is proof that miraculous conception was not coincidental, but had non-scriptural and mythical origins.
Now we seek it out in Ancient Greece, a European civilisation that started with pre-historic Greece (roughly late 3rd millennium BCE) and lasted until Roman rule (4th century CE).
Around 700 BCE, the poet Hesiod’s “Theogony” offered the first written origin story of Greek mythology.
The universe and all things came into existence out of Chaoticnothingness. This is the infinity oddity, a primeval void and emptiness. The formless Chaos then generated order and “formed the very fabric of the universe, were known in Greek mythology as the Protogenoi (protos meaning ‘first’, and genos ‘born’)”.
Out of chaos, Greek mythology said the following terrestrial features and cosmic realms came into existence: Gaia (Earth), Uranus (sky/Heaven), Aether (light), Ananke (force of necessity/Fate), Chronos (time), Erebus (space), Hemera (day), Hydros (water), Nespoi (islands), Nyx (night), Ocanus (oceans), Ourea (mountains), Phane (generation), Phusis (Nature), Pontus (seas), Tartarus (deep abyss), Tethys (fresh water), Thalassa (surface of the sea) and Thesis (Creation).
The adoptions of Greek mythology into Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) are very apparent!
The Greek “Septuagint” is a 3rd to 2nd centuries BCE text. It is considered the oldest record of the complete text of the Hebrew Scriptures without an unidentified source.
The Septuagint is considered a “translation” of the Hebrew Scriptures and yet there are no known scripts, scrolls, parchments or texts that one can call “Hebrew Scriptures” before the 3rd century BCE. (“History and Literature of the Bible: Authorship and Composition of the Torah” (2003) by Micheal W Palmer.)
Greeks themselves adopted many features and figures of the Egyptian pantheon: “The names of nearly all the divinities came to Greece from Egypt. I know from the inquiries I have made that they came from abroad, and it seems most likely that it was from Egypt, for the names of all the divinities have been known in Egypt from the beginning of time, with the exception (as I have already said) of Poseidon and the Dioscuri – and also of Hera, Hestia, Themis, the Graces, and the Nereids. I have the authority of the Egyptians themselves for this.” (Herodotus, “The Histories, II.50.2”.)
“They also told me that the Egyptians first brought into use the names of the twelve divinities, which the Greeks took over from them, and were the first to assign altars and images and temples to the divinities, and to carve figures in stone.” – (Herodotus, II.4.2, ibid.)
“I will never admit that the similar ceremonies performed in Greece and Egypt are the result of mere coincidence – had that been so, our rites would have been more Greek in character and less recent in origin. Nor will I allow that the Egyptians ever took over from Greece either this custom or any other.” (Herodotus, II.49.2-3, ibid.)
The primordial aspects (Titans) gave birth to the Second Order Principles (Olympians). Greek Mythology had a pantheon of deities who were said to live on Mount Olympus. From there, they ruled every aspect of human life. Olympian divinities were humanoid under the authority of Zeus.
The all-knowing and all-powerful Zeus was responsible for law giving and governed conduct of mortals and immortals, enforced the laws, knew the future, and ruled the heavens where he commanded meteorological phenomena. His most powerful weapons were thunder and lighting.
The Greek chief deity of the sky, Zeus, is said to have impregnated the mortal Kallisto after he had disguised himself as Apollo in order to lure her into his embrace. She gave birth to Arcas, who was a divine son.
Kallisto was a daughter of the Arkadian King Lykaon and her name is derived from kalliste, meaning “most beautiful”.
Through a bolt of lightning, Zeus is said to have impregnated a mortal, Semele or Persephone, who gave birth to a divine son, Dionysus, the Greek deity of wine, wine making, pleasure and fertility.
“According to the poet Pindar, it probably derives from the words ‘Zeus’, the father of Dionysus, and ‘Nysa’, the mountain on which Dionysus was born and raised.”
In human terms, Zeus was lustful and when a mortal woman has her body violated and impregnated by an immortal or mortal power without consent, that is abuse and rape, respectively! When it is not in human terms, the narrative is literally fictitious or philosophically allegorical or mythical.
Next, we explore the connection of the myths.
Email feedback at [email protected]. A gallery of his previous articles can be found at www.sundaymail.co.zw///?author=266
