astro picture for the day

Image Credit & Copyright: Wally Pacholka

----------------------------------extra goodie for the day----------------------------------------------

There was a recent article about the inflationary period of the Big bang.  I have for a long time suggeted that the dark energy is an inflationary aftershock; this article seemed suggestive to me that I should continue to champion it; unfortunately, I've lost the article and can't find it!  So, I'm going to mention something a little more down to earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus

I was reading Thomas Heath's "History of Greek Mathematics" and Mr Heath mentioned that Heraclitus said that Pythagoras was unwise.  When, I looked up Heroclitus wiki, I saw all sorts of interesting things like he came up with the logos before Plato(hence Plato was influenced by Heraclitus), tried to categorize everything in opposites.   James Burke in his "The Day the Universe Changed" mentioned the Greeks thought everything came in opposite pairs and suggested that the Greek deduction started out from this idea(it did not; it goes back to Thales at least; although, Heraclitus's ideas certainly helped initially).  These are all very interesting, but, then, I noticed something peculiar, the mentioning of a Clement of Alexandria really taking a liking to Heraclitus!

Yes, the wiki mentions the Heraclitan logos influence on Philo.  Philo was 'midrashing' the old testament to combine jewish religion with greek philosophy around the time of the supposed life of Jesus Christ.  Philo lived in Alexandria.  Philo also just happened to be extraordinarily rich; he controlled the trade root from the indies straight into Alexandria; that's pretty rich!  His nephew was subsequently rather rich(Tiberius Alexander).  Tiberius Alexander was so rich, he bought Vespasian's way into the Roman emperor throne.  Vespasian and his son Titus along with Tiberius Alexander who was part jewish went and destroyed the the second jerusalem temple.  Tiberius Alexander did not like James the Just to well oh by the way.  Robert Eisenman has recently(about 1997) written a book called "James brother of Jesus" where he linguistically shows that Jesus Christ is just a midrashed hellenistic sungod overwright for james the just(who's james the less in the gospel of Mark chapter 15 I do believe).   Philo who not only did a lot of philosophizing(midrashing), also wrote lots of history of the times; he does not mention a Jesus Christ.

Back to Clement, going to today's wiki,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_of_Alexandria

Here, we see that Clement at least considered the Greek gods at least were personifications of the stars, sun, moon, and planets( in his Protrepticus).  For Clement(and Philo before him and all those other church fathers before and after Clement of Alexandria), Jesus Christ is the true religion because they could midrash him out of the old testament; they thought this midrashing was like mathematics; that it meant something real.

It's long known that the Gospel of Mark(and consequently the other gospels including that of Thomas) have two sources, a stoic source of sayings and a biographical(by means of midrashing); here, we see that Clement of Alexandria was much into stoic quotes like you see Jesus Christ doing in the Gospel of Mark(and the other gospels).

We see here how mankind has struggled and failed to shed its pre science mythological(science at one time when mathematics wasn't there).  Clement of Alexandria for one turned to vague black magic of midrashing and mythology because he saw all the corruption of the world around him and blamed it on mathematical science.  He was way over-generalized(and the pagan philosophers were corrupted by vague corrupt practices). 

Because of the escape from hard to learn mathematics to easy mythology and religion(believe and your in), christian fathers soon learned this trick(see my quotes of Eusebius at the end of my gospel of truth; the first post of this blog; it essentially says, "if people want to be decieved, then why not?"); because christianity made it easy to be accepted, they had more people, more money, and hence more power.  This is a sick evil social power; the dark side of the force.