Jesus as the Sun throughout History: Plato, Socrates & the Middle Ages
In her book Jesus as the Sun throughout History, D.M. Murdock / Acharya S presents evidence that many aspects of Jesus Christ, and of Christian tradition in general, represent motifs from solar mythology. In part 5 of this ebook excerpt, the writings of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) and Charles Francois Dupuis (1742-1809) are examined. The origins of the terms “Sun of God” is found to be an original term of Plato and Socrates in early Greece.
Jesus as the Sun throughout History
by D.M. Murdock/Acharya S
Excerpted from the ebook
Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499 AD/CE)
The relationship of Christianity to sun worship continued throughout the ages, as exemplified by Marsilio Ficino, an Italian Neoplatonic-Christian philosopher of the 15th century who wrote an extensive essay on sun worship called The Book of the Sun, or De Sole. In the Preface to his book – written in a Catholic country by someone well aware of the Inquisitor toes he would be stepping on – Ficino expresses his purpose:
“I am daily pursuing a new interpretation of Plato… Therefore when lately I come to that Platonic mystery where he most exquisitely compares the Sun to God Himself, it seemed right to explain so great a matter somewhat more fully, especially since our Dionysius the Areopagite, the first of the Platonists, whose interpretation I hold in my hands, freely embraces a similar comparison of the Sun to God.” (Voss, 189)
Ficino provides an extensive comparison of God with the Sun. In fact, chapter IX of Ficino’s book is entitled, “The Sun is the Image of God. Comparisons of the Sun to God,” in which he remarks: “Having very diligently considered these things, our divine Plato named the Sun the visible son of Goodness itself. He also thought that the Sun was the manifest symbol of God, placed by God himself in this worldly temple.” (Voss, 202) Ficino further states:
“According to Plato, [Socrates] called the Sun not God himself but the son of God…” (Voss, 211)
It is thus Plato (c. 428-c. 348 bce) and/or Socrates (c. 469-399 bce) in the fourth to fifth centuries prior to the common era who determined that the son of God is the sun of God, although, of course, the sun was likewise considered the son of one god or another much earlier in ancient Egypt and elsewhere as well. Naturally, this statement by Plato was made in Greek, so there appeared no natural play on words as occurs in English with “son” and “sun.” Nevertheless, the motif of the “sun of God” being the “son of God” is pre-Christian, and there is no other way to express it in English. Moreover, this sun-son word play has been noted many times previously in history by a variety of individuals.
The sun-son play on words as applicable to Christ has been deemed so “common” as to represent a “devotional pun.” Obviously, this “devotional pun” was widely recognized centuries ago by the English-speaking intelligentsia and educated elite. Therefore, shallow criticisms of the statement that the son of God is the sun of God represent illogical straw men reflective of ignorance of this fact and should be dismissed as such. In reality, the repeated punning across several centuries proves once more that Christ was widely associated with the sun long before the 19th century. In any event, the idea of the sun as both God and the son of God predates the Christian era by centuries, and the ancient solar role was most obviously transferred first to Yahweh and then to his supposed son, the alleged Jewish messiah Jesus Christ.
Charles Francois Dupuis (1742-1809)
In the 18th century, French scholar Charles Francois Dupuis, a professor at the College de France, produced his multivolume book “Origines de tous les cultes,” in which he discussed astrotheology as the root of major religious concepts. In the English translation of various excerpts from this work, The Origin of All Religious Worship, Dupuis states:
“Let us well bear in mind here, what we have proved in another place, that Christ has all the characteristics of the God Sun in his birth, or in his incarnation in the womb of a virgin, and that this birth arrives just at the same moment, when the ancients celebrated that of the Sun or of Mithras… The actual question now is, to show, that he has also the characteristics of the God Sun in his resurrection…” (Dupuis, 243)
Dupuis calls Christians “those worshippers of the Sun under the name of Christ” (43), while he later refers to the description “the Christians have of the holy face of their God Sun, Christ….” (Dupuis, 96)
Dupuis also refers to “the Sun Christ in Palestine” (111), and he discusses the Greek gods Dionysus/Bacchus and Hercules as being the “God Sun,” saying:
“…Should the reader be well convinced of this truth, he will then easily admit our explanation of the solar legend, known by the Christians under the title of the life of Christ, which is only one of the thousand names of the God Sun, whatever may be the opinion of his worshippers about his existence as a man, because it will not prove anymore than that of the worshippers of Bacchus, who made of him a conqueror and a hero. Let us therefore first establish as an acknowledged fact, that the Bacchus of the Greeks was merely a copy of the Osiris of the Egyptians…and worshipped in Egypt was the Sun.” (Dupuis, 116)
Dupuis cites many ancient authorities to prove his points, including Diodorus Siculus, Chaeremon, Jamblichus/Iamblichus, Plutarch, Diogenes-Laertius, Suidas, Macrobius, et al.
Moreover, Dupuis has an entire chapter entitled, “AN EXPLANATION OF THE FABLE, IN WHICH THE SUN IS WORSHIPPED UNDER THE NAME OF CHRIST.”
Dupuis continues:
“When we shall have shown – that the pretended history of a God, born of a Virgin at the winter solstice, who resuscitates at Easter or at the equinox of spring, after having descended into hell; of a God, who has twelve apostles in his train, whose leader has all the attributes of Janus; of a God-conqueror of the Prince of Darkness, who restores to mankind the dominion of Light, and who redeems the evils of Nature – is merely a solar fable, like all those, which we have analysed, it will be quite as indifferent, or of as little consequence to examine, whether there ever existed a man by the name of Christ, as it would be to enquire, whether some Prince was called Hercules, provided it will be conclusively demontrated that the being, consecrated by worship under the name of Christ, is the Sun, and that the marvelousness of the legend or of the same poem, has that luminary for its object; because it would seem then to be proved, that the Christians are mere worshippers of the Sun…” (Dupuis, 217)
Dupuis also addresses the history of the contention for Christian sun worship:
“We are not the only ones, nor the first, who have this idea of the religion of the Christians. Their apologist Tertullian, agrees, that from the earliest days of the introduction of this religion in the West, the more enlightened men, who had examined into it, pronounced it to be merely a sect of the Mithraic religion, and that the God of the Christians like that of the Persians, was the Sun. In Christianism there were sundry practices remarked, which betrayed that origin; the Christians never said their prayers, without facing the East, or that part of the World, whence the sun rises. All their temples, or all their religious meeting houses were anciently facing the rising Sun. Their holy days in each week had reference to the day of the Sun, called Sunday, or the day of the Lord Sun…. All these practices derived their origin from the very nature of their religion.” (Dupuis, 266.)
And so on, throughout his magnum opus – indeed, Dupuis’s entire work is designed to demonstrate the astrotheological underpinnings of religion in general and the solar mythology of Christianity in specific.
Dupuis was followed also in the 18th century by French scholar Count Volney, who likewise put forth the case for Christ being the sun in his book The Ruins of Empires. In the 1820s, English clergyman Rev. Dr. Robert Taylor likewise wrote about Christ as the sun, paying for his insight with two prison terms for “blasphemy.” In more modern times, in 1925 F.J. Dölger published a comprehensive study of “Christ as the sun in Christian antiquity” called Sol salutis, while Finnish scholar Dr. Yrjö Hirn (1870-1953) “mentions Christ as the sun and the Virgin as a cloud, citing this analogy by Bernard of Clairvaux [1090-1153] and Gualterius Wilburnus.” (Katz, 20.)
Conclusion
Far from being a “modern” conspiracy contrived by various shady globalists, the equation of Christ with the sun and the solar nature of Christianity were so obvious not only to the early Pagans and Christians alike, based on the Bible, writings of Church fathers, Christians traditions and artifacts, but also to the Mexican natives the Nahua, for example, that they “combine the sun and Christ into a composite personality who is the masculine creative force in the Nahuat universe.” (Taggart, 57) As remarked upon by anthropologist Dr. James M. Taggart – one of my professors at Franklin & Marshall College – in Nahuat Myth and Social Structure:
“The annual movement of the sun toward the north from its lowest point on the horizon at the winter solstice is concordant with the annual festival cycle. The major winter solstice ceremony celebrates the birth of Christ and the annual re-birth of the sun as it begins to move north bringing more heat and light with gradually longer and warmer days. The annual movement of the sun along the horizon is analogous to the movement of the sun during the 24-hour period, so that the winter solstice is to the summer solstice as midnight is to noon. The climactic moment of the Christmas celebration – a procession carrying the Christ child from the house of the mayordomo (ritual sponsor) to the church – occurs at the time of the day (midnight) analogous to the corresponding time of the year (winter solstice). Other major festivals fall on or near other major events in the solar year. The Easter celebration occurs near the vernal equinox; the festival in honor of San Juan [St. John] occurs just after the summer solstice; and All Saints’ Day in honor of the dead is near the autumnal equinox.” (Taggart, 57-58)
Other native cultures – uninfluenced by anything other than the Christian church in one form or another – likewise perceived Christ as the sun and Christianity as another permutation of the ancient solar religion they were already following before their conquest and subjugation under Christian rule.
There remains much more about the solar origins of Christianity and the solar nature of Jesus Christ beginning from the earliest times to the latest. Suffice it to say that this equation did not begin or end in the 19th century with any particular group or individual but, rather, has a long history within Christian tradition itself, as we can see proved abundantly here and elsewhere, such as in my books.
In the end, we need to ask ourselves: Is it more scientifically plausible that 2,000 years ago the God of the cosmos took birth through the womb of a virgin as a Jewish man who walked on water, performed miracles, raised the dead, resurrected himself from death and ascended into heaven – or could it be that this tale is a reworking of older myths in currency around the known world of the time?
Source: http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/jesussunexcerpt.html
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Tags: Christian, Christianity, church, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Plato, Socrates
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