I’ve post a link to the hieroglyphic dictionary produced by Mark Vygus before. Egyptology News posted a heads-up a few days ago that the dictionary had been updated. It’s now a breathtaking 2,267 pages long with 40,000 entries. Here is the direct link to the PDF (11.1 MB, so let it load) on the Pyramid Texts Online site.
Free (and Massive) Hieroglyphic Dictionary Recently Updated
Thank you for your website. I like reading the Sitchin books and also your arguments here on your website because I think that is good for thinking and for making opinion to read many possibility view of the thing and this is reason why your website are good – I don’t know where has true but I can read both and – think about it – this is what I can do for making my opinion.
Let me to ask you about few things. For me, for example is difficult to accept idea, that I will die and probably I will not know response these questions for example:
How happend creation of man?
Why the dinosaurs died?
What was real function of pyramides?
What happened with the Mayan civilization?
Atlantis existed at all?
What is true story about Jesus?
I think that is good to have “some questions”, maybe is good believe and doubt together, jinak by Schliemann didn’t find his Troy.
Thank you for your website and for Sitchin books – because there is my reason why for example now – I am studying about Sumer civilization, why I am travelled to the Lebanon – to see the Baalbek, why I wonder to know Where was the garden of Eden :o) And which questions interest you?
tai
thanks for the note, but your questions are painfully broad and even open-ended. Why not ask me how the universe began? But, very quickly and over-simplified, in order:
1. I believe in God, so I believe God is the creator; how that was accomplished no one knows (it isn’t as simple as quoting Genesis, since biblical scholar of all stripes know the text is elastic in what it can affirm in that regard).
2. Because they weren’t eternal; everything dies. My guess is some climatic event led to their demise.
3. They were tombs (we know this not because human remains were found in them – that is rare — but because they show clear evolution from more primitive tombs called mastabas — pyramids were essentially built over mastabas — see the Djoser pyramid as a prime example of development). I also believe they were used for some afterlife rituals.
4. No one knows; cultures dies out all the time (and technically, there are actually many survivors to the Mayans even now — genetically speaking).
5. As new agers think of it, it didn’t exist (all that nonsense is built around a few sentences in Plato). I think Plato had *some* place in mind, but not what Edgar Cayce was making up.
6. Read one of the four gospels. The four were considered sacred since all early Christians held them as sacred (some “alternative” forms of Christianity held others sacred, both those are never mentioned in early Christian canon lists, and those groups didn’t deny the authenticity of the ones that we know from thew New Testament). The four gospels were sort of “everyone can accept these accounts” in terms of their status. It is illogical to presume a document isn’t historical if it contains elements of the supernatural in its accounts (we might as well throw out all ancient Egyptian historical texts if that’s some sort of litmus test).
To find the true story of Jesus you say read one of the four gospels because they were held sacred. The early texts were destroyed and the texts we have today are copies of copies. How authentic are the copies and who and why were the early ones destroyed. We only have “the gospel according to” who wrote these and how can you say they are authentic?
First, you don’t know that originals were “destroyed.” That wording suggests that the copies had to be re-composed from memory or something like that, as though they are somehow detached from the originals to some significant degree. There is no evidence to warrant either conclusion. The originals were more likely copied many times, and eventually degraded. In Jewish contexts, old manuscripts of a decrepit state are ceremonially burned, so that’s a (remote) possibility. I say remote since the NT church had no scribal class until well into the medieval period. The manuscript we have is within a generation or two of the originals. There are also roughly 6000 manuscripts of the NT (compared to 10 for things like Caesar’s Gallic Wars). The transmission history of the NT is (literally) light years beyond anything else in antiquity. It isn’t even close. For a really cool interactive graphic on the figures, see: http://www.biblestudymagazine.com/interactive/newtestament/index.html
Hi MSH and thanks for the link.
The reason I believe that the early records were destroyed if because I see things in the Acts and the writings of Paul/Saul that are highly questionable, some I would say even criminal. The most dramatic of which that comes to mind is the case of Ananias and his wife Sapphira (Acts 5). Holding back some of their own monies for themselves after the sale of their property seems hardly a crime worthy of instant death! And for the two of them to die within 3-4hours is a bit much. Did God do this? It can be demonstrated how this can be done. A stroke mostly likely was the cause. You can check out how it’s done on my blog site here http://kyrani99.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/strokes-or-cerebral-vascular-accidents-are-no-accidents/ and you will see it’s dead easy if the people involved are unaware. However this is not all.
About 80% or more of the New Testament is really the work of Paul/Saul. His work does not ring true with the teachings that Jesus was giving. Jesus had no theological disputes with the Jews. He did not discredit the Jewish religion. Paul’s version of Jesus’s teachings is very consistent with Roman thinking. You only have to look at the interpretation the Romans had made of the Greek God of Mt Olympus to see how corrupt they were. Paul’s work is also not only inconsistent with the Gospel of Thomas, but diametrically opposed to it. If Paul’s work was to survive and be taken as “the Gospel truth” then the rest had to be re-written but for that to happen the originals would have had to be “permanently lost”. And let’s not forget Paul would have had the originals, if not all then at least a significant amount.
I would say from the accounts of the Acts that Paul was a Roman agent. They had reasons to distort the faith. I do not believe that Paul was chosen by God but by the Romans “to do a job” and he did it well. However the fall out is monumental harm to a lot of people for more than two thousand years now.
We really need a new reformation. Reading the holy texts of all the religions and not only Christianity is not enough. People need first hand religious experience, to find the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.. to die before they die to find Bliss and the Peace that passes all understanding.
I have to say that most of your response would get laughed out of the room among NT scholars (many of whom are skeptical of Paul himself as a NT writer; others for other reasons).
Okay to say it is going to get laughed at but why? Give me something to understand what you find unreasonable?
He thinks things like Christianity arose from eating hallucenogenic mushrooms. This is utterly incoherent, not only because he has no proof, but because there really isn’t any idea in Christianity that one cannot find in Jewish theology and, before that, ancient Near Eastern religion. What is unique to Christianity is how certain theological threads converge on Jesus of Nazareth, and the role and nature of Jesus. But even the latter (Jesus was God incarnate) derives in substantial part from Godhead language in the Old Testament and earlier Judaism (see http://www.twopowersinheaven.com). By faith Christians accept Jesus being the “final fruition” of all that thinking.
You don’t need mushrooms for any of that. THAT is why (primarily) Allegro’s stuff is considered nutty.
His scholarship was also viewed as suspect in other ways, which is why his Dead Sea Scroll volumes were re-done by other scholars.
Let me say something to topic “true story about jesus” and why I have doubts about the authenticity of the story of the Gospels. I have not read any gospel but I see how history is destroyed only during my lifetime. How events are “rewritten” as political regime or order. I’m talking about the events during the thirty years, but then – logically – what must have happened with the Gospel texts thousands of years back? Look around you – what is presented as good today may be a few decades and completely wrong otherwise. Just read articles in newspapers … I come from a country where I experienced a change in the political system and the fall of the regime, when I imagine what must have happened since the death of Jesus … is not a force that would convince me that “his “story is true as presented for example in the gospels.
This is my reasons why I have written that I want know the true story about jesus
tai
you have doubts about material you haven’t read? Would you distrust a person whose words you never heard?
My advice is that you not let your political experience color your decision about some other, unrelated issue. Enjoy the freedom you have to read the gospels (among other things). Reading them would be better than me launching into a discussion about how unique the New Testament is in terms of the amount of manuscripts (close to 6000) and the merits of its transmission history (very high degree of uniformity, not counting things like spelling of names, which changes even in modern times). That a work is old does not mean a work cannot be trusted at all, or even substantially. We trust works from ancient Egypt that are thousands of years OLDER. That the NT gospels are old is not an argument against their historical status. Naturally, the New Testament has theological claims as well. Those are also not subject to criticism because of age or chronology. Accepting or rejecting them depends on their own coherence as truth claims, regardless of age.
Hi, I agree that if you don’t read a book or chapter you can’t comment.
I can’t respond to the mushrooms bit though because I have never taken hallucinogenic mushrooms. But there may be a case made on the grounds that there is only One Mind. The Greeks call the Holy Mind, the Tibetans call the One Mind, the Islamists call The Void (Al’lah) and so on. If you go to YouTube and check out the physicist Fred Alan Wolf you may understand a bit as he married quantum physics with shamanic/ mushroom-taking practices and found some commonality and pointers to the nature of Mind. Interesting what he has to say but not specific to Christianity.
You said” “I have to say that most of your response would get laughed out of the room among NT scholars (many of whom are skeptical of Paul himself as a NT writer; others for other reasons).” I asked you why and you don’t give me any answer.
You say that “What is unique to Christianity is how certain theological threads converge on Jesus of Nazareth, and the role and nature of Jesus.”
and you go on to say that “Jesus was God incarnate”.
That to me is laughable. God’s existence and nature cannot possibly be associated with one man’s appearance at a particular time on the earth, even if he (or she) is a prophet. To talk about God incarnate is really to misunderstand what is meant by God. There is no god that is the TM of any one particular religion. There is only One God and that is true for everyone in this and every other universe.
The idea of two two powers is completely man made and has no basis on enlightenment /mystical experience.. ie direct experience (ego having been extinguished). So it is not “By faith Christians accept Jesus being the “final fruition” of all that thinking” but by BLIND faith as the final solution. Paul decided that you don’t have to obey any religious laws (because they were Jewish religious laws) because he knew the Gentiles were not going to be made Jewish so he solved the problem by declaring “you only got to have faith”.
Paul was in the same class as Charles Manson.. a butcher. If the latter declared that he saw a vision of Jesus and become a believer and then preached as suited you really think this is cause to accept him. Apart from that he was dead set keen on blaming Jews for Jesus’s death (if he was killed on the cross or otherwise). Assuming that it is true, who has to gain? The Western Roman empire at the time of Paul was crumbling, even Rome was not surviving as an integral whole. The only part that could be still salvaged as an empire was the Eastern Roman empire, which was predominantly Greek city states all the way around the Mediteranean to North Africa. If the Greeks revolted then there’s a problem. So they sold them a good story. I am Greek and I feel it is regrettable that the Greeks were so taken in. In it’s original form the Christian Orthodox (called Catholic/ meaning universal) church was a far cry different to what it has been reduced to. The Greeks understood philosophy and theosophy and had integrity. The Roman were savages. Constantine added to the destruction of the original religion by destroying the democratic system of bishops and appointed himself head and God’s rep on earth, and there Jesus’s teachings and prophethood were lost to humanity.
Well, your “one time and place on earth” misreads the incarnation of NT theology. I can’t reproduce NT theology here, so I will have to recommend that you do some reading on Christology and incarnation. Perhaps some of NT Wright’s books. Your characterization of Paul is ridiculous. Can you cite me one piece of ancient evidence that Paul was a mass murderer of innocents? Please. It is *presumed*, based on the line in Acts about Paul holding the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen that he played a legal role in that act, and so was a participant. And he probably would have had others thrown in jail and ultimately get the death penalty. And he LAMENTS that in his epistles when he calls himself the chief of sinners. But there is no piece of biblical or extra-biblical data that has Paul as mass murderer. I also doubt if Charlie is lamenting what he did. Why the hatred for Paul?
Hi, you ask “Why the hate for Paul?”
Jesus, like every other prophet first and foremost did not want to start a new religion and certainly not one with him as God. Secondly Jesus expressly said (Luke 18:19) Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” so he is saying that he, Jesus is not God. Then he goes on and says “You know the commandments: You are not to commit adultery, murder, steal, give false witness, and honor your father and mother”, i.e., the Ten Commandments. These are the heart of Jewish law.’
We can look at the parables because there corruption was little possible because they are like Koans, they cannot be grasped intellectually, so they would not have been understood by anyone wanting to corrupt the scriptures. However we don’t need to discuss those, as I think the quotes above are enough. And in any case you would be familiar with them.
Now if we go to Paul we find the following, amongst a lot more.
Paul said to the gentiles (Rom 3:28) “So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law”. And further down claims “only when we have faith do we truly fulfill the law. Notice he is not saying obey here either. This is in dire contradiction to Jesus. It is code. He is saying to evil people “hey guys do whatever you like throughout your life and at the end, with your last breath accept Christ as your savior and bingo you’re home and hosed!” IMO that is garbage.
I know many evil people and many of them that are church goers and bible bashers and I found that they have horns bigger than an elephant’s trunk. And all of them quote Paul. They insist that they are through the pearly gate sure as.. And it is not only them.
I have heard Christians say “I don’t believe that those who go to hell are evil. Instead, I believe that those people go to hell for rejecting God’s offer of salvation. That is all. Among that crowd, you can have people who devote their lives to doing “good” or people who devote their lives to doing “evil.” It doesn’t matter.” WOW! And little wonder when you look at what Paul has to say.
There is also that part, which I can’t find the reference quickly, but basically says: “where two or more are gathered in my name, there is my temple” or words to that effect. This is not God he is referring to but Satan. Every material body, whether animate or inanimate is a temple of God. But Satan is a different story. For Satan to exist, ie for there to be an “evil spirit” or what we would call an evil mindset in today’s jargon, there needs to be at least two evil people gathered or assembled to form an evil mindset. This I have been told by evil people themselves.
What is the fallout of Paul mission?
Missionaries have gone around the world and burn whole tribes of people in open fires in some cases and they go to heaven because the heathens wouldn’t convert and they were doing God’s work! You really think this is “of God”?
Look at the European Inquisitions, (they were not only in Spain, they were right across western Europe). Hundreds of thousands if not millions were tortured to death.
What about Hitler? He was a Christian. Is he in heaven? After all didn’t he just gas the Jews that wouldn’t accept Jesus as their savior? And the Pope stood by mute.
What about the crisis in the world today. There is the beginning of a mass movement away from Christianity in the West and many turning secular, atheist or agnostic. But there is also a lot of harm done in the East. Missionaries are selling Paul and they are targeting people who are essentially evil. It is all about dollars and recruiting people in that part of the world that would “do whatever it takes to get ahead/ do what an evil employer wants”.
All of this is due to Paul and the perversion of Jesus’s teachings. Paul is about the perversion of theism. Paul is about Satan’s work on earth under the guise of religion. This is abhorrent alright. It’s OUTRAGE! I hope he burns in hell for ever and ever and ever and ever, ad infinitum.
I am a theist and I strongly support the institution of religion because there is value, even if only in the preservation of sacred texts but the perversion of religion and corrupt people in religious institutions, whether as clergy or congregation, are thing we need to stand against and stand strongly against because it is the worst form of corruption.
Thanks for your discussion, Kyrani99
There is nothing new in here. Literally all of this stuff has been branded by NT scholars of all theological stripes somewhere between “misguided” and “ridiculous.” But this response is basically nutty. It shows not only a near-complete misunderstanding of Pauline theology, but a propensity for non sequitur logic (blaming Paul for stuffed that happened a millennium later in places he never visited. And linking Pauline theology with the Pope? Holy cow. And that Paul would say Hitler was a Christian? Utterly incoherent and nutty).
Paul was interpretive and quite literally sold a brand of theology. He did not espouse the true teaching of Jesus. If you have had a mystical experience you soon see that his arguments and interpreations do not hold water where truth is concerned.
As for blaming Paul, I think one has to consider the consequences of one’s actions, especially when they move to affect the beliefs of nations. The seeds of actions grow and bear fruit.
Hitler claimed he was a Christian did he not? The link I am suggesting is that when people only need to have faith in Jesus as God and Savior and need not obey the law, as Paul suggests, then Hitler becomes one of the good and you say that is nutty? Please, this is gross. The problem lies in the teachings of Paul.
You are saying: “And linking Pauline theology with the Pope? Holy cow”
I said the Pope was silent on the matter of the Jews and there is nothing nutty about it. This is historical fact of the modern era. This is a direct consequence for blaming the Jews not for a historical event but a theologically connected one.It is this sort of thing that is driving people away from Christianity.
It seems to me you are about defending Paul without resorting to theological argument because as you did previously, you look to attack me instead. Why? because there is no theological argument to defend Paul and you know it.
I’m about scholarship, not anger that produces innuendo and unfounded claims. The Pope has nothing to do with biblical theology, so I could care less what the Pope says. I could also care less what Hitler claimed (and that Hitler claimed anything doesn’t mean it was true — there are whole books on Hitler’s pseudo-religious claims — I have them, and know this is crap, as Hitler’s ideology is an interest of mine, particularly his occultism).
The connections you imagine are just that — imaginary. This is the sort of stuff you’ll see on the web and in popular “research” but that dies in the face of primary sources.
What do you mean by scholarship? Is your interest only academic?
my interest is correspondence to reality.