Actually he reminds me most of a Billy Graham style preacher, because of Jesus's inclusive agenda and his tendency to . Graham was born in 1918, which is GI according to S&H. Imagine if the Billy Graham Crusades had started in 1937 instead of 1947 and if Christianity weren't a major religion in this country... Or if he'd been preaching in Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany. I don't think it would have ended well.Originally Posted by Eric
Boy I sure wouldn't think of Jesus as like Billy Graham. They are opposites.
Graham was big on civil rights, and frequently insisted on desegregating his revivals. They're not opposites.
Kepi,
To be honest, man, I'm not sure if you can cherry pick based on feelings like that. How can Jesus be a Civic and Paul be an Artist if they were born five years apart? Were the turnings really that close? What changed politically when Jesus was executed? What institutions were rewrought? I think it would be worth remembering that to the Jews of the time (and most peoples), Big Religion the way the Pharisees practiced it WAS the main institution, the federal government of the day.
I agree with this. I never saw Jesus as a crusder; he was always a prophet. And the timing even fits. The destruction of the temple and the forced diaspora is clearly the 4T event in this period.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Artists always follow civics. 5 years makes a difference.
As for what changed politically, it was the Romans working with the Temple as opposed to with the King. Like you say, big religion is the politics of the day. Jesus didn't insert new values into Judiasm or a new big idea. Those values had always been there. If you look at the Pharisees beliefs, they were interested in the same things Jesus was, they just wanted to do it in an ultra legalistic way. There are theories that Jesus was an Essenene rabbi, and that the pretext of the stories were originally Essenene in nature. Either way, the story is about a time when there was a political conflict between the scribes, Pharisees, Zealots, with Jesus stuck in there with an agenda of a different purpose. If this was an awakening story, cosmology would have been central. Instead, in the synoptic gospels, it's all about this life. The book of John is different, and written late 1st century. That book is a lot about cosmology, and that makes sense if the early stories were written in the high about a crisis, and then you have another edition proclaiming the new truth discovered/created by the prophets in the awakening, which is after the destruction of the temple.
The events, though, are all crisis. They're all about the political system killing and destroying a miraculous man who can heal people, walk on the water, turn water into wine, and just wants to help the poor: A hero in favor of letting a terrorist (Barabas) go free to buy a peaceful coexistance between Rome and the Temple.
Here are the three saeculum schemes I have, and for the period
Turning A B C Kepi U -- 71-49 BC -- -- C -- 49-28 BC -- -- H -- 28-7 BC -- 63-36BC A -- 7BC-14 -- 37-12BC U 76-44 BC 14-35 -- 12BC-8 C 44-12 BC 35-55 -- 9-33 H 12BC-14 55-75 -- -- A 14-41 75-95 25-50 -- U 41-70 95-115 50-70 -- C 70-102 115-134 70-102 --
These schemes suggest prophet, nomad and hero archetypes for Jesus. How does one decide which one is most correct?
Last edited by Mikebert; 03-30-2013 at 05:58 AM.
Okay... looking at it in terms of dates, He High started probably when Antigonus II was defeated by the Romans. The consciousness revolution is in 37 BCE when Herod the Great turns over Antigonus II. The unravelling was probably around 14 or 13 where Herod the Great lowers taxes and Antipater II is made his first heir. This puts both Herod The Great's death and Jesus's birth in the unravelling, meaning Jesus is a hero. I would put the beginning of the crisis somewhere around and 8 or 10 CE, because it takes a while for you to realize your king is a total douche, and that would put Christ's death in either 33 or 34 CE as crisis range, especially when I'm saying it's beginning of the end.
Dates:
H 63ish - 36 BCE
A 37 - 12/13 BCE
U 13/14 BCE -7/9 CE
C 8/10-32/35 CE
It's a sore loser's saeculum, but it follows the pattern.
I put your dates into the table. Now we have four saeculae schemes that are different. If there really is a saeculum how it is that when different people look at the same piece of history they see different saeculae?
When we're going that far back, you've got a several issues: one is the unification of religion and governance, which makes awakenings and crisses look similar. Next is that you're dealing with nations who are on different cycles because they're economically so seperated and so distanced from eachother they can never coincide. Also, we tend to look at history based on what is relevant to us. Also there's a time difference between when the actual gospels were written and when the events happened. Also, information travelled much slower. It was just sloggy over all.
Since Christianity is a big deal by the 4th and 5th century, we think the foundation is a big deal... It just wasn't during the 1st century. So the events in the bible aren't going to be seen as the dominant view point. Plus, add in about 30 to 40 years to the point of writing the last gospel at least, of course it's going to seem like an awakening work. But back then? Probably not "the big deal" that it is now. It was probably a historical moment, and really what matters is the story (which is either high and/or awakening at time of writing and it doesn't look civic). It's the details that really make the difference, though.
I read your answer and it's a good answer to the question I asked, which shows me that I did not ask the right question. So I going to try again. However you did raise an important point here that I am going to want to bring up later.
What I was trying to get at is how can we know that there IS a saeculum if we cannot reliably detect it? It's like four men discussing the color of a chair in the room. Man A says its green, man B says its brown, man K says its blue and man C says "what chair". It seems that before we can discuss interior decorating involving the chair we would have to first ascertain (1) is there a chair and (2) what is the color of this chair.
The chart I posted proves that different observers see completely different "chairs" when looking at the saeculum around the time of Christ. Now you see what you see in that saeculum, just like Man K. The author of saeculum A and B see different saeculae that are both different from yours just as Man A and Man B see differently colored chairs than Man K. And then there's the author of saeculum C who doesn't see a saeculum at all, like Man C doesn't see a the chair.
So the first question is, how would you advise the four men to determine the facts about the chairs existence and color? The second is how would you proceed with the saeculum authors?
Last edited by Mikebert; 03-29-2013 at 09:00 AM.
Well, if you're talking about proving to a guy that a chair exists... Throw it at him. If it's his problem it'll hit him and you can go from there determining if it's a perception problem or an existance problem. For determining color, you go get paint swatches and you compare and contrast.
With proving the saeculum, it's more like proving waves in the ocean exist deeper than the water's crest. And it is difficult, mostly because you need really solid documentation from the era and that either doesn't exist or is so esoteric it's difficult to access in a lot of cases. But that's really it... You compile data over time and compare and contrast that data over time until either you don't believe it anymore or the pattern is obvious... While there will always be nonbelievers, the fewer there are the more absurd it looks.
In the example I gave man C was visual impaired and the other three were color blind. Your solutions would work, although the first one was a bit extreme
Yet you were able to make an assessment more or less on the spot, without having to consult a lot of solid documentation. So were the others able to do so. So maybe a huge amount of solid data isn't absolutely required?With proving the saeculum, it's more like proving waves in the ocean exist deeper than the water's crest. And it is difficult, mostly because you need really solid documentation from the era and that either doesn't exist or is so esoteric it's difficult to access in a lot of cases. But that's really it... You compile data over time...
I believe this is pretty spot on. I would guess that you and the saeculae A and B creators all did this and obtained obvious patterns. Here's the rub, what is obvious to you apparently is not obvious to them. So it would seem that an agreed-upon pattern is necessary so that everone is comparing apples to apples. Otherwise this issue will always come up anytime something tries to use this idea. THis would be convincing evidence that there is nothing to the saeculum concept....and compare and contrast that data over time until either you don't believe it anymore or the pattern is obvious...
This comes across as sort of like a religion. Do you consider what S&H proposed as aspect of (social) science, or is it a faith-based philosophy?While there will always be nonbelievers, the fewer there are the more absurd it looks
It may seem extreme, but it more or less would answer any and all questions about the reality of the chair. Same with the color blind folks, though it's easier to resolve the conflict by just identifying the general consensus. There's no "objective" green per se, if I saw green through your eyes it could be something entirely different from what I see, however, because we've all been taught to identify green as something particular, the consensus overrides perception.
Similarly with science. Facts are just a set of assertions we all agree on, more or less. We're still discovering "what everything is made of" with science. Social sciences follow an even more fuzzy sort of logic. If you're human, dealing with absolute fact is kind of impossible (remember, the ultimate truth maybe that you're trapped in a nightmare realm by a dark God who wishes to ruin you with 80 year stints of banality you can't remember after each iteration), so we sort of build a consensus over time about what reality is, what it means, and how it effects us. If you look too closely at how we know what we know, though, we wind up in an infinite recursion of checks.
So to answer your question... At some point everything in life must be faith based to some extent, however it doesn't have to be blind faith. Take math... How do we know our math is true? Because it does what we want it to? Doesn't that seem a bit too convienient? What if instead of 1, 2, 3 the one true counting system is underwear, 3,000, ham? If it was, I would still use the "fake" math that does what I want it to, because it does what I want it to, and you can build consensus and meaning on top of it. If something measures ham inches, how do I quantify that?
As for S&H's opinion of Jesus and our differing opinions on the turning. I came in with limited information, but the S&H theory has always been more about the telling than the facts, and more about attitude than absolutes. While they strive to back it up with data (smart move there, building consensus), I feel like they glossed over the story of Jesus and didn't really give it a proper look over in the greater context of the Bible. They merely looked at Jesus as a part of these narratives instead of saying "there was once a guy named Jesus, and he did some stuff, and they wrote about him later" and considering Jesus as seperate from, but related to the texts... So lemme put it this way... The Revelation of John, does that seem like it was written durring a high, awakening, unravelling, or crisis?
Deciding on saecula in the Roman times can only be an estimate based on historical patterns. We can look at what happened and make a guess. It can't be based on generations, and can support no proposal about which generation anyone was, for the simple reason that there was not sufficient social change in ancient times to create generations, and society consisted of elites only.
These guys date the Book of Revelation from the 60s AD because of internal evidence such as references to the seven churches or seven emperors. Other dates are in the mid-90s or later. If it was a prophecy of the destruction of the Temple, then it would be Unravelling or early Crisis in my estimation. It was a warning of what would happen in the Crisis. One theory is that the vision happened in the 60s but the book was only published in the 90s. Some say it was written by John the Apostle; others by another person called John of Patmos, because it was written there, according to the author known only as "John."
I wasn't referencing the dates yet. I'm talking about what the text says. It's clearly an awakening type of work. The Gospel of John and The Revelation of John are at the least, written after a new awakening. Meanwhile the synoptic gospels are written earlier. Somewhere between the writings of the synoptic gospels and the Gospel and Revelation of John, there was an awakening.
Now, we've got our possible points for crisis and awakening, but the Awakening dependant works are coming from times that are generally believed to be more or less late in the first century, where as the synoptics are early to right in the middle. So there we have the destruction of the temple being closer in proximity to an awakening than a crisis. Now, that's not emphatic, but it's there. But then look at the response to the destruction of the temple. It was to establish a social, nonstate expression of the religion. Does that sound like a crisis response to you? It really doesn't to me, it sounds like an Awakening.
The Awakening can only exist in the feeling of liberation and hope among the followers of Jesus. It was heady stuff, a consciousness revolution. They lived in a new way, inspired by his teachings and his presence among them. They spoke in tongues and channeled their new deity. They watched as he ascended into heaven. Awakening indeed! If this wasn't one, the term has no meaning.
It sounds like rebuilding after a disaster. Sounds first turning to me. This would also be the time of the "good emperors." I don't know where you put the silver age of Trajan and Hadrian though.Now, we've got our possible points for crisis and awakening, but the Awakening dependent works are coming from times that are generally believed to be more or less late in the first century, where as the synoptics are early to right in the middle. So there we have the destruction of the temple being closer in proximity to an awakening than a crisis. Now, that's not emphatic, but it's there. But then look at the response to the destruction of the temple. It was to establish a social, nonstate expression of the religion. Does that sound like a crisis response to you? It really doesn't to me, it sounds like an Awakening.
The new religious sect was never a new state religion or a rebellion against the state. Jesus said Pilate got his power from above; he was not rebelling against him. My kingdom is not of this world, he said.
The synoptic gospels were written in the 60s-70s AD along with the early date given for Revelation, though probably based on sayings and accounts of Jesus that were circulated earlier. Late Awakenings and Unravellings are when ideas from Awakenings are developed and formalized, as many of our recent new age visionaries did in the 1980s. Awakenings are when the inspiration comes, the bolts of lighting from above. That was Jesus, the Resurrection, Ascension, and Paul on the road to Damascus, etc. So 28 AD = 1966 AD, more or less.
Revelation (assuming the early date) being more violent, maybe more like your "white" (black) awakening? More like the pessimistic and violent attitudes of an unravelling, like the punks, metals and rappers? The violent fantasies of slasher movies, over-the-top special effects and death-dealing video games?
Last edited by Eric the Green; 03-29-2013 at 04:15 PM.
Revelation isn't particularly violent. There's a minor mention of an impossibly huge war which everyone likes to overrepresent, but it's hardly the main point or message in Revelation, which essentially boils down to "Christ is Lord, therefore Cesar is Not." It's a philosophical manifesto coded in metaphor and cultural reference so the Christians and Jews of the day can understand it, but everyone would see it as the stuff of fantasy. Also, Apocalypse lit was really popular at the time in Christian and Hebrew culture. The term Apocalypse means "lifting the veil", and the purpose is to enlighten the reader to the devine truth about what's really going on. People wouldn't write this stuff until an Awakening. These maybe written later than the Awakening proper, but they're evidence of an Awakening that occurred within the writer's lifetime.The Awakening can only exist in the feeling of liberation and hope among the followers of Jesus. It was heady stuff, a consciousness revolution. They lived in a new way, inspired by his teachings and his presence among them. They spoke in tongues and channeled their new deity. They watched as he ascended into heaven. Awakening indeed! If this wasn't one, the term has no meaning.
It sounds like rebuilding after a disaster. Sounds first turning to me. This would also be the time of the "good emperors." I don't know where you put the silver age of Trajan and Hadrian though.
The new religious sect was never a new state religion or a rebellion against the state. Jesus said Pilate got his power from above; he was not rebelling against him. My kingdom is not of this world, he said.
The synoptic gospels were written in the 60s-70s AD along with the early date given for Revelation, though probably based on sayings and accounts of Jesus that were circulated earlier. Late Awakenings and Unravellings are when ideas from Awakenings are developed and formalized, as many of our recent new age visionaries did in the 1980s. Awakenings are when the inspiration comes, the bolts of lighting from above. That was Jesus, the Resurrection, Ascension, and Paul on the road to Damascus, etc. So 28 AD = 1966 AD, more or less.
Revelation (assuming the early date) being more violent, maybe more like your "white" (black) awakening? More like the pessimistic and violent attitudes of an unravelling, like the punks, metals and rappers? The violent fantasies of slasher movies, over-the-top special effects and death-dealing video games?
The establishment of Rabbinnacal Judaism isn't rebuilding, it's a devestating loss. This isn't a response a bunch of people deadlocked in an ultimate fight to the finish would accept, it is what you'd expect from people willing to have a revolution in consciousness. Had this occurred in a crisis, I think the response would have been the abandonment of Judaism, rather than the transformation of it.
Also, we can't take the stories of Jesus or Paul to be indicative of all people at the time. I mean, God could come to me tomorrow and lay out plans for his new religion tomorrow... But when would I expect to see that faith really take hold? Not for another 40 years! A person could have a religious experience any time, but it's when that experience gets taken to the masses that's relevant. Remember, Jesus's execution was witnessed by many, however, his subsequent resurection was witnessed by reletively few and the early days of the Apostalic Age featured a very small number of believers and converts who weren't interested in bothering to leave the temple and argued over circumcision and other religious technicalities. It wasn't until later that Christianity was really seen as a legitimate option, and that was because the books were written (meaning information could be spread) and people were willing to really convert, which is probably due to the destruction of the temple.
The old order was still in place for many Christians until 70 AD, and the destruction of the temple was part of a consciousness revolution, because it's not the celebs that really matter it's the availability for the common person.
It looks to be a crisis event. We don't know when John was born, so I would put down Hero as the gen snce that would be the rising adult gen. Revelation is an apocalyptic text written by a Christian mystic. A sample of these kinds of events and people are given in the table below. I asign the individals involved into generations when I have borth dates, otherwise I labeled them as the geenration in rising adulthood when the event took place. If it happened to a group of people then I list the rising adulthood generation for the turning. I use S&H turnings and consensus ones from before. I don't have a generation scheme for Mohammed.
Anyways you cna see these mystical events do occur from time to time and the people involved fall into all for generation. Since of lot of mystics are interpreting visions from God, and making prophesy's they are performing the role of prophets. And more of them (15) fall into the Prophet gen than any other single generation. But the majority of these prophets/awakening actors are not Prophets (23 out of 38).
Date Event Associated persons Birth Gen 37 St Paul converted on the road to Tarsus Saul of Tarsus 7 N 95 Revelation written John of Patmos (Awakening event) ? P 610 Mohammed’s initial visions Mohammed 570 ? 632 Angel dictates Koran Mohammed 570 ? 1126 Christiana Markyate,, mystic (N) d 1155 1095 N 1129 Hildegard of Bingnen, mystic (N) d 1179 1098 N 1177 Apocalyptic prophesy Joachim of Fiore, mystic 1130 H 1191 Mystical writings concerning Kabbalah Issac the Blind 1160 P 1208 Out Lady of the Rosary (apparition)) Dominic de Guzman (P) 1170 P 1231 Beatrice of Nazerethe, mystic (P) d 1268 1200 P 1231 Beatrice of Nazereth, mystic (P) 1200 P 1251 Our Lady of Mt Carmel, apparition Simon Stock (A) 1165 A 1296 Helwige Bloemert, mystic (A) 1265 A 1310 Marguerite Poete, mystic, burnt 1310, P ? 1342 "The Fire of Love" Richard Rolle, mystic 1290 P 1366 Mystical marriage with Christ Catherine of Sienna (H) 1347 H 1372 Dame Julian (H), mystical experiences 1342 H 1428 Joan of Arc (N) Visions 1412 N 1436 The Book of Margery Kempe (A), mystic 1373 A 1519 Mother Shipton, prophetess (P) 1488 p 1531 Our Lady of Guadaloupe (apparition) Juan Diego (P) 1474 P 1546 Theresa of Avila, mystic (P) flourished 1515 p 1578 Dark Night of the Soul, mystic poem John of the Cross 1542 H 1594 Our Lady Good Success (apparition) Mariana de Jesus Torres (H) 1563 H 1664 Our Lady of Laus (appartion) Benedicta Rencourel (H) 1647 H 1830 Our Lady of Miraculous Metal Catherine Labouré (P) 1806 P 1846 Our Lady of LaSalette (apparition) Mélanie Calvat, Pierre Giraud (N) 1831,35 N 1858 Our Lady of Lourdes (apparition) Bernadette Soubirous (A) 1844 A 1871 Our Lady of Pontmain Barbadette family, Crisis event H 1879 Our Lady of Knock Many witnesses, unraveling event N 1884 Pope Leo's prophesy from Christ Leo XIII 1810 P 1906 Apparition of Mary in Poland Maximilian Kolbe (N) 1894 N 1917 Our Lady of Fatima 3 children 1907-10 H 1918 Padre Pio, mystic, stigmatic (N) Padre Pio (N) 1894 N 1932 Our Lady of Beauraing (apparition) 5 children (A) A 1933 Our Lady of Banneux (apparition) Mariette Beco (H) 1921 H 1968 Our Lady of Zeiton Awakening event P 1973 Our Lady of Akita Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa (A) 1931 A 1980 Our Lady of Cuapa Awakening event P 1981 Our Lady of Kiheho Rwanda Awakening event P
Last edited by Mikebert; 03-30-2013 at 07:51 AM.
I'm a big fan of mystic Christianity, and find it to be extremely interesting.* While I appreciate the list, and find it very interesting, I do think Paul of Tarsis is an artist and John of Patmos was a Prophet.
Also, not all mystic experiences are visions or dreams, some come in the form of understanding.* For instance St. John of the Cross had a profound mystic experience that was plagued with doubt and pain for years, which brought about mystic understanding but never experienced visions.* Mother Theresa went through a similar mystical spiritual journey with similar results.
As for John of Patmos, I don't believe at The Revelation of John is an actual vision.* Like I said earlier, Apocalypse literature was prevalent at the time that The Revelation of John was written.* Common characteristics of Apocalypse Literature are to present the writing as a vision or a dream.* While I don't doubt that prophets (in a religious sense) and mystics experience legitimate visions which are truth in a religious sense, I do doubt that The Revelation of John is a genuine vision, nor do I think it was attempting to be one at the time, it was just merely following the conventions of the genre.* The Apocalypse of John wasn't the first, nor the last of it's kind, much of the book retells earlier stories found in scripture, it flows like a philisophical argument, and some of the visions aren't metaphorical and aren't possible (for instance Rev. 9:16 says there are 200 million people at Armegeddon, which is a little hill next to a church sitting underneath a modern Israeli prison... You just can't fit that many people there).
Meanwhile, Paul, especially in the way he navigated a lot of the early church's issues and his responses to how the church should react to Rome come across very much like Marting Luther King, Jr. (Though in a slightly more passive, less resistance kinda way... Different enemy, different tactic). If Paul was a prophetic type, he'd have been spoiling for a riot. Paul, instead, was tempered and nuanced. That's an adaptive response to Rome, not a prophetic one.
I took Mother Teresa off the list because her experiences were more of a calling, not mystical. In that she is like a great many saints, and then I would have kept the hundreds I knocked off the list to come of with the stripped down version I posted. John of the Cross should be on that list (add a hero). I checked the master database and he's not in there, well he's in there now. A first class saint missing. It's errors like this that led me to abandon trying to "screen" for prophets and awakening-type events to look for prophet generations/awakenings. The approach I'm trying here is taking small periods and sticking them on to the existing saeculum, working backwards. The big issue is methodology (see below).
I've made three corrections. I added John of the Cross to the list. John of Patmos is now a prophet since saeculum B agrees with you on John making it two votes for prophet versus one for hero. For Paul, after looking more carefully, I find two votes for Nomad and only one for Prophet and one for Artist (yours). So the Nomads have it.
I think that may be true, but it really doesn't matter. I would expect a fair amount of the mystical writings to be in a similar vein. I agree that the Apocalypse of John is just the sort of thing that would show up in an awakening, and that John is playing the prophet role. If you consult the list you will find John and 14 others who are listed as possible Prophets in the generational sense. But there are another 23 who fall into the other generations. Based on this small sample, folks like John were twice as likely to be Prophets than any one of the other generations, (but since there are three other generations, more prophets end in in one of these three than in the Prophet generation). Producing apocalyptic or mystical writings is a Prophet attribute, not everyone who did this (or even most of them) actually came from Prophet generations. After all, if you have the mystical bent, you are going to go that way even if you were born into a Hero, Nomad or Artist generation.As for John of Patmos, I don't believe at The Revelation of John is an actual vision.* Like I said earlier, Apocalypse literature was prevalent at the time that The Revelation of John was written.* Common characteristics of Apocalypse Literature are to present the writing as a vision or a dream.* While I don't doubt that prophets (in a religious sense) and mystics experience legitimate visions which are truth in a religious sense, I do doubt that The Revelation of John is a genuine vision, nor do I think it was attempting to be one at the time, it was just merely following the conventions of the genre.* The Apocalypse of John wasn't the first, nor the last of its kind, much of the book retells earlier stories found in scripture, it flows like a philosophical argument, and some of the visions aren't metaphorical and aren't possible.
People on this board frequently observe that they don't feel the generational archetypes apply to them, that they might actually belong to another generation. So the idea that there is a one-to-one correspondence between an event or person who "comes across as" a particular turning event, or generation is not supportable when you start considering a large number of similar events and the people involved. It certainly is supporting evidence in favor of a particular turning, but a lot more evidence is needed, as well as evidence against the assertion (if there is no contrary information that is powerful evidence that the analysis is incomplete). This last point is important because humans are a pattern-forming animal, if there is even a ghostly cycle present in history that could be detected by inspection, it would have been described long before S&H. That this didn't happen probably means the cycle is hard to detect reliably. This idea is consistent with the fact that different people see different saecula when looking at the same piece of history. These different observers (me included) do not have an adequate detection method. This is the core of what I hope to explored in a theory thread, the question of methodology.
Good point about Paul not being a prophet. But I would argue that Paul’s approach could be described as pragmatic too and so consistent with a Nomad Archetype as well as an Artist one. I can see Paul as a Hero too since he was also an institution builder. Would there even be a Western church today if evangelization had been left to the "pillars" in Jerusalem?Meanwhile, Paul, especially in the way he navigated a lot of the early church's issues and his responses to how the church should react to Rome come across very much like Martin Luther King, Jr. (Though in a slightly more passive, less resistance kinda way... Different enemy, different tactic). If Paul was a prophetic type, he'd have been spoiling for a riot. Paul, instead, was tempered and nuanced. That's an adaptive response to Rome, not a prophetic one.
Last edited by Mikebert; 03-30-2013 at 08:20 AM.
I don't see this content as Awakening-like at all. It happens all the time. Our recent unraveling was full of this kind of thing, a lot of it we call conspiracy theories. Look at all the folks here talking about Civil War or people looking to prepare against a societal collapse.
I doubt that very much. Judaism is also an identity. You can't abandon your identity because of external events. Isn't their whole tradition one of bad shit happening to them becasue they are the chosen people and haven't behaved according to God's will. They were enslaved by the Eqyptians, Israel ripped to shreads by the Assyrians, Judea captured by the Babylonians, and then subjects of the Persians and then the Greeks before a century of so of independence under the Macabees only to become a conquered people again under the Romans. So they do what they had always done--move on.Had this occurred in a crisis, I think the response would have been the abandonment of Judaism, rather than the transformation of it.
No, typically the awakening period contains the very early start of new movements. The spread to the masses occurs over the subequent turnings. Example, the Methodist Awakening begins with John Wesley receiving the call as a young man in the Transcendental Awakening. but Methodism isn't established until the subequent Crisis (1780's comes to mind, but I would have to check).Also, we can't take the stories of Jesus or Paul to be indicative of all people at the time. I mean, God could come to me tomorrow and lay out plans for his new religion tomorrow... But when would I expect to see that faith really take hold? Not for another 40 years! A person could have a religious experience any time, but it's when that experience gets taken to the masses that's relevant.
IIRC, there's a remark that something like 400 people in Galiee saw the risen Christ. Then there's the curious phenomenon of his brother James. The only apparent entry of James into the Gospel account was Jesus's cool reception in Nazareth. I suspect that Jesus had abandoned his own family to purse his religious calling and his brothers were sore about that. What he did would be justified if he were a true prophet of the Lord. Had he proved he was a prophet by performing miracles in Nazareth, then all would be good. But Jesus didn't do any of the miracles for the home folks of Nazareth that he did for the people in Capernaum. So it looked to the Nazareans like he had taken off and left his brothers holding the bag. Later James shows up as one of the pillars of the church in Jerusalem. Perhaps he saw the risen Christ and so realized that his brother was the Real Deal after all.Remember, Jesus's execution was witnessed by many, however, his subsequent resurection was witnessed by reletively few
Christianity was a more-or-less underground movement for nearly three centuries after Christ. It spead at least as fast as the Cathar movement. Not as fast as Islam, but that was aided by the power of a state and by armed conquest. Protestanism was pretty fast too, but again they had state support from the beginning. The earlier similar movements like Lollardy that lacked such support did not get off the ground.
Last edited by Mikebert; 03-30-2013 at 02:27 PM.
I beg to differ
If it was John the Apostle who wrote Revelation, then the Awakening he experienced was Jesus.There's a minor mention of an impossibly huge war which everyone likes to overrepresent, but it's hardly the main point or message in Revelation, which essentially boils down to "Christ is Lord, therefore Cesar is Not." It's a philosophical manifesto coded in metaphor and cultural reference so the Christians and Jews of the day can understand it, but everyone would see it as the stuff of fantasy. Also, Apocalypse lit was really popular at the time in Christian and Hebrew culture. The term Apocalypse means "lifting the veil", and the purpose is to enlighten the reader to the divine truth about what's really going on. People wouldn't write this stuff until an Awakening. These maybe written later than the Awakening proper, but they're evidence of an Awakening that occurred within the writer's lifetime.
They fought to the death, very determined; then they picked up the pieces and moved on.The establishment of Rabbinical Judaism isn't rebuilding, it's a devastating loss. This isn't a response of a bunch of people deadlocked in an ultimate fight to the finish would accept, it is what you'd expect from people willing to have a revolution in consciousness. Had this occurred in a crisis, I think the response would have been the abandonment of Judaism, rather than the transformation of it.
The hundreds of Christians who witnessed the ascension had a potent experience of the world having changed because of Christ's presence, and they lived a new life in a new state of consciousness. That's an awakening event, par excellance. The religious experience is what counts to make an Awakening. The Church was small, but it remained small for a long while. Paul's activism is what slowly built the Church that survived. That would be equivalent to the "moral majority" activism in the 3T today.Also, we can't take the stories of Jesus or Paul to be indicative of all people at the time. I mean, God could come to me tomorrow and lay out plans for his new religion tomorrow... But when would I expect to see that faith really take hold? Not for another 40 years! A person could have a religious experience any time, but it's when that experience gets taken to the masses that's relevant. Remember, Jesus's execution was witnessed by many, however, his subsequent resurrection was witnessed by relatively few and the early days of the Apostolic Age featured a very small number of believers and converts who weren't interested in bothering to leave the temple and argued over circumcision and other religious technicalities. It wasn't until later that Christianity was really seen as a legitimate option, and that was because the books were written (meaning information could be spread) and people were willing to really convert, which is probably due to the destruction of the temple.
Consciousness revolutions means changes in consciousness, not destruction of a culture. But there was certainly a change in mood after the Temple; the Jews and Christians had to change their approach to things.The old order was still in place for many Christians until 70 AD, and the destruction of the temple was part of a consciousness revolution, because it's not the celebs that really matter it's the availability for the common person.
400 to the thousands who were swamping him earlier. It was a pretty small group of people who were still willing to hang around. That's a crisis response to me (they're made, and all but the die hards surrender and return back to normal life).
Christianity was a minority movement for the first 3 centuries, and while that means you can have certain experiences that are outside the norm for the turning you're in, you're still subject to the turning's overall trends. Kinda like Billy Graham's crusade in the last 4T. It was definitely a taste of things to come (to civil rights, then the awakening spawned from it), and had a seeding effect, but it was not a big movement to begin with and thus...
This just doesn't ring true. The 3T is just not the time to start or join a cult, which at this point in time, Christianity would have been. If your starting numbers are 400 folks, that's a tiny, tiny splinter to be standing on. You can maintain and even make incremental gains on one in a 1T, however, and see exponential growth in one in a 2T. I mean, look at how organized religion fared in this 3T, it splintered and failed in no small part due to the Moral Majority.
So while, yes, this was a very 2Tesque experience for the folks involved, the greater context was 4T. These guys were just in the eye of the storm, if you will. Also, if John of Patmos was John the Apostle, and all the works of attributed to him were indeed his, he still had a very different experience somewhere in there. The Gospel of John is so different from the synoptics. These works could be released in a 3T, but I feel they're best explained in relationship with the synoptics, with having at least the better part of a 2T between them.
Compare and contrast the Synoptic Gospels and Acts with The Gospel of John, The Books of John, and Revelations. The former are dated prior to the destruction of the temple, the latter are dated after. Also, the 1st book of John is all about the division in the Christian church, and who is a heretic and who is a false prophet and why. This is a late 2T to early 3T activity. The Gospel of John appears to be a reaction to Gnosticism (though some have argued it's a reaction to The Gospel of Thomas, which is debatable if that was originally written with gnostic intent or not).
Also, when you're accusing a guy called Simon the Magician of buying a position of power in a tiny cult and accuse him of lawlessness... You're closer to the 2T than you are away from it, and it's probably written by civics telling the whipper snappers to get off their lawn. That's in Acts, and written towards the end of Paul's life.
The 400 were folks back in Galilee, but we know nothing more about them. The apostles did not return to Galilee, Jesus instructed them to stay in Jerusalem (Acts 1:4-5). By the time of the Ascension there were about 120 Christians in Jerusalem (Acts 1:16). On Pentecost Sunday about 3000 were converted. (Acts 2:31). SO the Jerusalem church started out about 50 days post-Ressurection at 3000+.
Within a few years the movement has spread to Syria and had come to the attention of the religious authorities who were looking into the group (e.g. Saul of Tarsus). Saul is converted (ca 7 yrs post resurrection) and the movement spreads to Greece and Rome. Around this time I believe it spread to Eqypt as well.
