Notes on draft of gods article
by Matt Giwer, © 2008

The following names are applied to local variations of a single goddess, Ishtar, Isis, Ashara, Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus. These are the same not just by name similarity but because the fundamental myths about them are variations upon the same story. The same applies to the male gods.

The following names are applied to local variations of a single god, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Tammuz, Mithras and as we shall see, Jesus. Under the first five names legend attributes him great physical beauty and hunting skills. Jesus by tradition had perfect physical form and was a fisher of men.

In the Hebrew bible the first commandment reads "I Adoni am your god." Adoni is the word translated as lord in the Christian version. In Greek Adon is lord. The oldest known version of the Old Testament is the Greek Septuagint. When the Hebrew version was created it kept the Adoni as the name of the god for some of the books although it generally defaults to Yahweh Elohim. Yahweh is translated into lord in English and Elohim as the singular god although it clearly has the plural suffix, im.

Yahweh and Ashara are a pair of deities found in the records of Ugarit. An inscription referring to Yahweh and his Ashara has been found in bibleland.

Adonis is the husband of Venus. In this imagining Adonis is the son of King Cinyras and either the king's daughter, Myrrha, or Astarte herself. Astarte as Venus falls in love with Adonis. Mars becomes jealous of Adonis, turns into a boar and kills Adonis. Venus travels to Hades (he descended in to hell) to retrieve him. Pluto's wife is also in love with him and they agree each will have him half the year. Venus gets the summer so this is celebrated on the Vernal Equinox as is Easter, the name Easter coming from Ishtar.

It takes Astarte two days to broker this deal so he can be resurrected. This explains the reason Christians insist upon three days in the tomb -- from old testament prophecy -- while having only two calendar days between death and resurrection which is from existing religious custom.

The Egyptian imagining of this story has Amun, Isis, Osiris and Set as the main players. Amun is the chief god of Egypt who made the first men out of clay. He was portrayed with the head of a ram, thus the Shofar horn. He came before the other gods as does Adoni in the first commandment.

Plutarch, in his Lives ("Alcibiades," XVIII), speaking of the sailing of the Greek fleet for Syracuse in the year 415 B.C., says: "It was an evil omen that the festival of Adonis fell in those days. Numbers of women bore images, like dead bodies, and held mock funerals; and they mourned and chanted the solemn hymns."

Thus the festival of Adonis was well established at least four centuries before the earliest incarnation of the Jesus story. The story itself is much older. The egyptian imagining is found on much older wall inscriptions.

Most Christians accept the doctrine of the Trinity which holds Yahweh and Jesus are the exactly the same god for this reason. One wonders if Ishtar is the Holy Spirit which connects the two names -- an eternal love triangle so to speak. The Holy Spirit is depected as a dove. Ashara's symbol was primarily the tree but also the dove.

The name Easter comes from the goddess Ishtar the wife of Adonis under the name of Attis. This is a vernal equinox celebration.

BYT YHWH and BYT STRT both refer to buildings in Jerusalem. They are translated as Temple of Yahweh, YaHWeH, and Temple of Astarte, aSTaRTe. Idols of Astarte and of the divine pair, Astarte and Yahweh, are found at all levels in Jerusalem and around Judea. They abruptly stop appearing in Jerusalem after Judeans (Iodiminae, commonly translated as Jews in English) are forbidden to enter Jerusalem by Hadrian.

It is reported her temple there had eight sides suggesting the grand mosque on the so-called temple mount was built on the foundation of her temple. Or perhaps it was merely renovated.

The Christian story of Jesus is simply another imagining of the common tale. Consider it a puritanical version leaving out the explicit sex.


additional points to include
[Esther, Ishtar, Purim] [Mohamed birthday a solstice festival]

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