Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!apple!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: tp0x+@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Mother/Child Mythology Message-ID: Date: 7 Jan 91 03:50:44 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon Lines: 53 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu A few months ago there was reference to "The Two Babylons" by Alexander Hyslop. The discussion died quickly and the moderator referred to "The Two Babylons" as "a notorious anti-Catholic Smear", if I remember correctly. For those who don't recall, the thesis was (partly) that Nimrod was the originator of systematic false worship based on the Mother-and-reborn child theme. Nimrod ruled from Babylon / Rome = the Babylon of the Apocalypse, etc. etc. I bring this up again because I am now reading Joseph Campbell's monumental "The Masks of God"; all of mythology in three volumes starting with the prehistoric reindeer hunters and carrying on to the present day. Campbell's idea (widely accepted) is that certain themes are visible in all world mythology, and, just as a vast number of languages are believed to have been derived from an early "Indo-European" language, so he thinks it obvious that all mythologies had an original source. This is interesting to one such as myself who believes that the first ten chapters of Genesis can be meaningfully mapped onto world history and that the creation of man from the dust occured around 70K years ago (that is, that anthropological and archaeological dating of man's antiquity are likewise meaningful). Man would have originally had a uniform education (in the days of Adam, at least). The story of Babel seems to me to be a confusion of (false) worship, rather than a confusion of language (examination of the word "tongue" in a Young's concordance bears this out) and the continuation of various apostate themes under various guises would naturally be associated with such an event. I would welcome email on any of these topics. But what I'm really asking the net is this: Has anyone read Campbell in detail? What do you think of the proliferation of Mother-Goddess-and-Reborn-Child-God pairs in the ancient and very ancient world? (Isis-Osiris, Demeter-Adonis, Ishtar-Tammuz, etc. -- I forget Indian and Chinese examples) Campbell regards the cult of the Virgin Mary to be just another example of this as a matter of course. As the support for adoration of the Virgin is not so much Biblical as traditional, I find this highly plausible. Tom Price tp0x@cs.cmu.edu Disclaimer: (You've got to be careful what I mean vs. what I say. -- Bill McCracken) [And God started out as a tribal war-god or whatever. Certainly there are patterns in religion that recur, even in Christianity. However that say little about its truth or falsehood. Various commentators have taken views such as all other religions are remnants of the original knowledge from Eden somewhat degenerated, or shams of the real thing created by Satan to delude people. More positively, if you accept Paul's comments in Rom 1 that God has put enough evidence in the world for people to know him, one should not be surprised to find similarities. --clh]