ANCIENT ASTRONOMERS & SOLAR MYTHOLOGY: DID THEY GIVE US THE FIRST "JESUS STORIES"?

We live in a different time today than did our forefathers. Most of us today live in big metropolis cities where at night the pollution and city lights blot out the spectacular view of the sky overhead and we have lost the awesomeness of the spectacle of the stars above our heads. There is an eerie orange glow that hangs above almost every large city or industrial centre and few know exactly what it is; simply said it is light pollution. If you live in a town and visit the country on a clear night you will see things that you never knew existed; you will see above you what the ancients saw: stars, planets, galaxies, comets, interstellar gas clouds, etc. If you live in the country and you spend a night in a town you will wonder where the Milky Way and the stars have gone to. The best way to understand how important it is for humans to be able to see the stars is to consider what it would have been like if clouds constantly covered the skies over the last 10,000 years. Most people are not aware of this fact but without the stars such innovations and leaps in learning as the following would not have occurred or would have been delayed by millennia: space travel, communication satellites, marine navigation (e.g. the discovery of the Americas), complex mathematics, advanced physics, precise timekeeping (therefore computing, fast telecommunications, etc) and so on. The sky and the orbs within them are very important for mankind to see and to both understand. This "truism" is especially true when we come to the topic of "religion" as we shall soon see.

THE ANCIENTS LOOKED AT THE STARS

In ancient times people were very familiar with the Sun and the stars. Early stargazers--especially the priests of Egypt and Babylon, semi-desert countries where skies are rarely clouded--were fascinated by the star-studded canopy which seemed to arch overhead, and by the daily cycle of the Sun, which seemed supernatural, beyond understanding. Since the dawn of time, Homo sapiens have pondered about their existence. They have asked repeatedly: "Where did we come from? How did we get here and where are we going?". These early thoughts gave rise to humans trying to make sense of their environment. Our early ancestors felt the urge to give order to their surroundings and explain how the world worked. This gave rise to cosmology, which is the study of the evolution, structure and origin of the universe. The ancients lived in a time when there was no television, no computer games and no electric light, so when the darkness of night crept in, humans lived in the realm of the stars.

Modern Egyptologists approximate that around 4,500 - 5,000 years ago the Egyptian civilization was rising in northeast Africa by the river Nile. But in the last one hundred years geologists have taken note that vertical water erosion on the Sphinx that can be dated to before 10,000 BCE. This fact tells us the the civilization of Egypt has been around for a very long time and with it their observation of the Heavens and the movement of the orbs within them. The Egyptians like many other cultures had wondered about their own existence and marvelled at the stellar spectacle displayed before them in the heavens. Egypt, like other nations, looked above their heads and saw the works and words of the Creator. To the Priests of these nations that took scrutiny of these orbs above their heads they in time noticed patterns and cycles and interpreted them, as they also noticed that they overlapped in nature around them, as the voice of God to them. God was speaking to them in His Heavens and the Priests and sages of these nations come to understand God's message to mankind written in the Heavens above. Like many cultures the Egyptians had developed their own story of creation by observing the unchanging Laws of the Cosmos.

Unlike the Biblicists version of creation the Egyptians envisioned the earth covered in an endless primeval ocean that they called Nun. Eventually the waters of the Nun (sometimes written as just Nu) began to subside and a primeval hill emerged from the floodwaters. It was on this hill that the supreme creator god Atum (god of the sun) would appear. After Atum’s emergence from the floodwaters he would create two new gods Shu (god of the air) and Tefnut, thought to possibly be the goddess of moisture. Atum had created the two gods through the act of masturbation, spitting out Shu and vomiting out Tefnut (Brandon, S.G.F., Creation Legends of the Ancient Near East, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd, London. Brandon, 1963, p. 22). Shu and Tefnut would go on to consummate their own union by creating the deities Geb (god of the earth) and Nut (goddess of the sky).

Therefore it is with Nut that we have unique insight into the minds of the early Egyptian astronomers trying to understand the heavens and their own creation. The Egyptians believed that Nut’s naked body was arched across the heavens from horizon to horizon. Attached to Nut’s body were the stars and seen supporting Nut was Shu and depicted below Shu was Geb (the God of the earth). Shu, along with his sister Tefnut (the goddess of moisture and water), were the first deities to be created by Atum. Shu is the lord of cool air and the upper sky. He was believed to be the one responsible, like Atlas, for holding up the firmament and separating it from the earth. Now before you get the wrong impression Egypt understood that within the all encompassing God we find the many aspects and workings of God and each of these "attributes of the One" were separated in order to better understood. This is not polytheism but correctly understood as "monotheism" where the Ultimate God, the First Cause, is the "All in the One". When the sun (Atum) would set the Egyptians would explain this as the goddess Nut swallowing the sun and then the sun would be reborn via the birth canal of Nut. Here we see some of the very earliest astronomical ponderings concerning the stars by the Egyptians.

The Egyptians had closely monitored the sun and this was analogous with the cycles of death and rebirth. The ancient Egyptians called their land kmt, which meant “the black land.” What the Egyptians were referring to were the fertile black soils that were spread across the Nile valley during the season of Akhet, the season of the inundation of the Nile river which flooded yearly at the "new year" and fertilized the desert and it was through this flooding and depositing of the volcanic silt from the mountains of Africa that the "desert bloomed" and provided rich soil for their crops and foods. About this time of year the star Sirius the brightest star in our sky not counting the sun would be heliacally rising on the eastern horizon. Sirius lies approximately 8.7 light years away and is located in the modern day constellation of Canis Major. The Egyptians called this star Sopdet, “vocalized by the Greeks as Sothis”. When Sopdet (Sothis) made its first dawn appearance the Egyptians would mark the start of their year.

Consequently this allowed the Egyptians to closely monitor the seasons and the changing weather patterns. For ancient cultures this was a very important consideration for their own survivability. They would need to know what the best time of the year would be to plant crops for example, so the monitoring the heavens apart from religious beliefs also had strong practical values and helped Egypt form the first calendar. In addition, the heavens would have acted like a giant storyboard to the Egyptians in which it would allow them a form of education, moral guidance and a sense of cultural identity as they studied the Laws of God and His universe operating in the Heavens above.

This leads us to our contemporary view of the cosmos. Cosmos is taken from the ancient Greek word for the order of the universe. Many of the Egyptian and other cultural stories and knowledge has been passed on to contemporary astronomers. Like the ancient Egyptians, astronomers in particular still seek to bring understanding to the universe and its origins. Early Egyptian astronomers viewed this as a higher power like Atum, but today astronomers use a vast array of more reliable methods to study and contemplate the heavens.

Religious motive rather than scientific understanding drove the Egyptians in many of their early quests to understand the cosmos. Although the Egyptians developed great scientific understanding in many areas, the Egyptians ascribed many heavenly events to a higher order whom they called "God". However, from these very early ponderings, a fascination has developed to want to understand more about the celestial realm above and this innate curiosity that was fostered with many of the early civilizations like the Egyptians still drives the passions of many cosmologists today. We see this same fascination of God and His universe in the Psalmist of the Hebrew Scriptures.

The ancient author of Psalm 19 wrote:

The heavens declare the glory of God, And the firmament showeth His handiwork; Day unto day uttereth speech, And night unto night revealeth knowledge; There is no speech, there are no words, Neither is their voice heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, And their words to the end of the world. In them He has set a tent for the sun, Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber; And rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, And his circuit unto the ends of it; And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

At night the ancients had nothing better to do than gaze up at the stars. The ancients looked to the sky to determine what time of year it was. It was important to know what time of year it was. You needed to know when it was time to plant crops and when it was time to harvest the crops. These answers came to them as they observed the patterns and cycles of the Cosmos that followed universal laws and established patterns that were discerned year after year for centuries.

These ancients didn't conquer darkness as we do nowadays by flipping a switch on our walls and the rooms of our homes "light up". It was more difficult for them. When sunset came it signaled the end of the day and the day as they knew it was over. The ancients then observed how the stars move across the sky during the night, and how different constellations are visible at different times of the year. They noticed and tracked the movement of planets and the Sun and correlated these movements to the different times of the year and their seasons. Theses wonders they observed and the Laws that undergirded them and the Laws that surrounded them in Nature that was connected to the Sun and its path through the Heavens brought keen understanding to them of God and His actions in the Cosmos. God was speaking to them and they heard Him and recorded these words of God and passed them down throughout history for those wanting this wisdom of God for themselves. Not only that but they wrote these "words" in stone and left it for all posterity in their temples and pyramids.

THE MESSAGE OF GOD...TOLD THROUGH MYTH

Answer for yourself: How do we hear God speak? How do we relate such a message?

We need to understand that one of the earliest advanced civilizations, Ancient Egypt, had a rich religious tradition which permeated every aspect of society. As in most early cultures, the patterns and behaviors of the sky led to the creation of a number of myths to explain the astronomical phenomena and the origin of mankind. Mankind has always possessed a want for exploring and explaining our origin. Before our secularized and scientifically dominated times religion - or myth if you so wish - has fulfilled the task of explaining the birth of the world and of mankind. Thereby also giving account for the birth of time. Mythology is defined as a collection of interrelated stories of a given culture. Myths tend to describe the creation of the world and give a culture an understanding of the events of nature and the world around them. Myths are also generated to tell the story of the first people to inhabit the earth. These people are elevated to gods and goddesses, which usually associate them as having supernatural and special powers. Myths also express the values or beliefs of a culture, and every culture studied has their own myths distinctive to their group. Ancient Egyptians tried to understand their place in the universe and their mythology centers itself on nature, the earth, sky, moon, sun, stars, and the Nile River.

Myth can likewise be understood as a given society's codification of its own traditional values in narrative and dramatized form. A familiar aspect of many religions is the use of narratives such as parables and fables to teach and reinforce moral attitudes and religious principles in forms easy to assimilate and remember. Myths are expressions concerning the underlying reality of a society that veil the truth about nature, humanity, and the society itself. In other words, a myth can be used to explain the current situation of reality as members of a given culture know it.

Religion in ancient Egypt was not unlike modern times. Today, not everyone believes in the same way, or of the same god. Egypt was no different. Individual kings worshipped their own gods or stressed certain aspects of this One God over others, as did other workers, priests, merchants and peasants. Pre-dynastic Egypt had formulated the ideas and beliefs of a "greater being", which was expressed in pictures and drawings. Some scholars suggest that "writing" was invented in order to communicate spiritual thoughts to the masses. Now the pictures had ideas, and took on human traits. Ultimately the concept of God and His various attributes were personified and in so doing took a life of their own: God in His personified forms (various attributes) now lived, died, hunted, went into battle, gave birth, ate, drank, and had human emotions. God, once His attributes were personified, had now in a way become "various gods within the One God". These various attributes or "gods" often overlapped, and, in some instances, merged. Their was no organized hierarchy structure of their reign. The dominance of one god over another god within God often depended on the beliefs of the reigning king. Their area of dominance depended on where the king wanted his capital. Likewise, the myths changed with the location of the gods, as did their names. Certain gods were worshipped in different areas. Local cities or villages, known as nomes, often had unique gods that were known only to that region. On occasion, these gods attained country -wide recognition and became the myths and legends that were passed on from century to century.

But let us not forget that these understandings of God by these ancients were told as "myths" which were derived from the movement of the Heavens above their heads. For the Egyptians, the practice of astronomy went beyond legend as huge temples and pyramids were built to have a certain astronomical orientations and within these alignments and their measurements we find a further expression of the identity of God and His knowledge imparted to mankind. Although many of the religious aspects of Egyptian life were known for centuries, it was not until recently that a number of archaeoastronomers attempted to find out how important astronomy really was in ancient Egypt. From the beginning, man has observed the heavens. Early man observed the heavens because the Sun, Moon and stars gave indication of coming seasons to farmers and hunters. The sky aided in navigation especially for nomads and sailors. And many ancient civilizations thought the sky gave signs of life, war, earthquakes, the fate of kingdoms...and more. The new field of archeoastronomy started in the 1960s with discoveries at Stonehenge. Archeoastronomy has been called the 'anthropology of astronomy' to distinguish it from the history of astronomy. This means that archeoastronomy pays attention to the astronomical practices, mythologies, and religions of ancient cultures. It sets to find out just how astronomy fit into a certain culture's life. Archeoastronomers will look at imagery and writing left by a civilization. They will look at architecture, especially to see if the buildings have any orientations towards the Sun or Moon or even Venus. The most common orientation is to look for alignment with sun rise on the date of a solstice. Ancient Egyptian astronomy like the astronomy of so many other pre-historic peoples was subjugated to religious mythology and the connections that existed between the heavens (the sky) and the earth. A great number of monuments throughout the Nile valley have been identified as possible constructions intended to capture the sun on days imparting meaning to the religious calendar or certain associated rituals (the equinoxes and solstices). A sophisticated knowledge of celestial bodies (in this case the sun) were indispensable to the ancients in constructing the sacred world which so closely interacted with the civil world and seasonal changes. While it seems that the astronomy of the Egyptians was confined to the realm of observation, it becomes much easier in such an instance to understand the mythology and religion which may have surrounded their fascination with the celestial bodies, and the regularity the observation of such provided them with in planning ceremonial tributes, etc. related to the religious aspects of culture, as well as the practical functions astronomy may have served for them in predicting the annual flooding of the Nile.

Answer for yourself: So how is this connected to the "Jesus Story" of the New Testament? Simply in this way: the Jesus story when scrutinized in such ways as described above can be shown to be the personification of the path of the Sun through the Zodiac as well as other astronomical phenomena as related down through time which finds its genesis in the path and movements of the orbs of Heaven above. This is not any different from other myths told for thousands of years as found in books on comparative religions which detail similar myths of other nation who tracked the movement of the Sun above and whom plumbed its meaning and message to them.

Foremost of the archaeoastronomers, and one of the pioneers in the field, was Sir Norman Lockyer, a British astronomer who lived from 1836-1920 and extensively studied Egyptian astronomy. In his wonderful book 'The Dawn of Astronomy', Lockyer breaks ancient astronomy into three distinct phases. First, a civilization goes through the worship stage, where astronomical phenomena are viewed only as the actions, moods, and warnings of the gods. Next, a civilization progresses to using astronomy for terrestrial purposes, such as for agriculture or navigation. The final step is to study astronomy solely for the sake of gaining knowledge. The Ancient Egyptians started in the worship stage and eventually began to see how astronomy could help them in their everyday lives.

ASTRONOMICAL WORSHIP....THE ORIGIN OF THE WORSHIP OF GOD

The Egyptian gods and goddesses were numerous and are pictured in many paintings and murals. It needs to be said in the beginning that when you study Egypt and their Cosmology you quickly see that they were "monotheistic" in that Egypt understood God to be the "Many in the One". God to them had many attributes and these were depicted separately in the myths of the "gods". All of these "gods" made up the One Ultimate Creator. Certain gods were seen in the constellations, and others were represented by actual astronomical bodies. The constellation Orion, for instance, represented Osiris, who was the god of the Divine principle of death, rebirth, and the afterlife. The Milky Way represented the sky goddess Nut giving birth to the sun god Ra. In the picture below, Nut is shown bending over the Egyptians. The stars in Egyptian mythology were represented by the goddess of writing, Seshat, while the Moon was either Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing, or Khons, a child moon god.

The horizon was extremely important to the Egyptians, since it was here that the Sun appeared and disappeared daily. The Sun itself was represented by several gods, depending on its position. A rising morning Sun was Horus, the divine child of Osiris and Isis. The noon Sun was Ra because of its incredible strength. The evening Sun became Atum, the creator god who lifted pharaohs from their tombs to the stars. The red color of the Sun at sunset was considered to be the blood from the Sun god as he died. After the Sun had set, it became Osiris, god of death and rebirth. In this way, night was associated with death and day with life or rebirth. This reflects the typical Egyptian idea of immortality.

In ancient times people were very familiar with the Sun and the stars. At night they had nothing better to do than gaze up at the stars. They saw how the stars move across the sky during the night, and how different constellations are visible at different times of the year. In such observations the ancients noticed that as the year passed the Sun appears to make a journey through the constellations of the Zodiac. The Zodiac is the ring of constellations that the Sun seems to pass through each year as the Earth orbits around it. The path the Sun follows is called the ecliptic. The ecliptic plane is the plane defined by the Earth's orbit around the Sun. All of the planets except Pluto orbit very near the ecliptic plane, so you will usually find all of them in zodiacal constellations. The ancient astronomer priests made up stories which were allegories based on what they saw in the Heavens above and around them in Nature as well. Later on, these stories took on a life of their own, as the stories were passed down from generation to generation but the knowledge of what the stories represented was lost. People started believing the stories were real and actual history of events that actually really happened in the past, when originally the stories were nothing more than allegories for what people saw happening in the stars.

We have our main problem right here: allegories expressing Divine Truths of the Creator were over time reinterpreted as "literal" stories and the original understanding of these stories lost their true meaning and a "false" meaning was taught in its place.

Now that was a little necessary background. For our purposes we will looking in this website and in these articles into the "possibility" that the story of Jesus Christ in the New Testament is little more than an example of an allegory of the movement and path of the Sun through the Zodiac. "Not so" I have many think when just thinking of such a concept. Well all I have to tell you is that you need to see the evidence before you discount this idea outright. When we finish the study then the conclusions you derive based on the evidence presented will be up to you. I would be amazed that after seeing the evidence that any could say at that time "Not so". I strongly believe that it is very important that every Christian and follower of "Jesus Christ" as depicted in the Roman New Testament become intensely familiar with this information in order to come to repentance regarding the idolatry connected with the Christian presentation of "Jesus Christ".