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It's a fascinating look into whether or not Jesus was a magician. The author does try to maintain an objective perspective, given that the mainstream narrative is on the whole, anti-occult. To clarify, magic and the occult are only acceptable to secular society as portrayed in fantasy entertainment: books, television, movies. Based on information presented by the author, religious anti-occult beliefs had a major part to play in how the gospels Matthew and Luke were written.
"... there are certain passages, which we will examine later in this thesis, in which Matthew and Luke appear to have taken great care to remove evidence of suspicious practices and insert anti-magical apologetic material. This suggests a considerable degree of embarrassment concerning the implications of magic present in the omitted text and this is understandable since magic carried severely negative connotations in the ancient world and it featured heavily in anti-Christian polemic. Although certain passages have been edited to remove implications of magic, elements of magical techniques still remain elsewhere in both Matthew and Luke."
Redactions, omissions, and outright historical revisionism are, of course, quite common in the Bible as a whole, including the "Old Testament." The actual sex worshipping, polytheistic history of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, aka the Land of Canaan, had to be rewritten by the resettlement establishment of the post Babylonian occupation.After some thought as to 'why' it has happened this way, from a magical perspective it would seem that the new Jewish priesthood sought to create and strengthen a new national egregore in a region where the Greek empire was such a strong homogenizing force. Likewise, the budding Christian priesthood, dealing with persecutions and threats to its existence in the Roman empire sought to unify a wide range of ethnic groups under a new egregore of faith in Christ. Both had to find ways to distinguish themselves sufficiently from "the others" such that the egregores could feed on the differences, be those oppositions and persecutions or obedience and sacrifice to the 'new' rules.
Of course, back then people could make up any shit they liked, and there would always be enough people who believed it to carry it forward from then on as The Truth. Needless to say, if you meditate on that particular concept enough, you see that there is 'nothing new under the Sun..."
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I had not read much of the text before making the first post, I admit. However, it is quite fascinating to read such a well-researched summary of the history of magic in the Middle East and Europe. Perhaps I had merely taken for granted that Persian, Greek, and Roman period cultures more or less accepted magic. I thought that prohibitions on some kinds of magic were more likely to be a Jewish invention circa the Roman empire. Nevertheless, as the text points out:
"Laws prohibiting the practice of magic grew in severity throughout the ancient world and whether the behaviour of an individual was deemed to be religious or magical was often a matter of life or death.
...
In addition to prohibition under Jewish law, the practice of magic was a criminal offence under Roman law during Jesus’ lifetime and strict laws ensured that the magician would be severely reprimanded or even executed if his activities were discovered. The ancient Roman legislation known as the Laws of the Twelve Tables (composed in the fifth-century BC) formed an important foundation for all subsequent Roman law and laid down penalties against those who use magical incantations.
...
In the light of these stringent laws prohibiting the practice of magic, the loyal followers of miracle-workers were faced with a problem; how to convince the populace that their miracle-worker derived his powers from authorised, approved sources. Even if a clear distinction between magic and religion did not originally exist in the ancient world, there were certainly many individuals busy constructing a distinction in order to avoid persecution and it is these points of contention that separate the behaviours typically associated with the magician from that of the miracle-worker. Certain groups and individuals proposed definitions of ‘magic’ that were undoubtedly weak attempts to redefine the word in order to allow them to continue with activities that were otherwise strictly forbidden. For example, the rabbinic leaders in early Judaism were fully aware that their ritual techniques suggested to observers that they had control over supernatural powers and that this practice was explicitly condemned by the Hebrew bible. Therefore, in order to guard their activities against a charge of magic, the Rabbis simply reinvented a definition of magic that allowed them to indulge in their rituals while still condemning the practice of magic by the outsider. The Sanhedrin stated that performing magic is punishable, while simply appearing to perform magic, or creating an illusion of magic, is not an offence (bSanh. 67-68). Furthermore, the Sanhedrin claimed that any act which benefited others could not be considered to be magic (bSanh. 67b) and finally, in order to eradicate any suspicions regarding their activities, they added that anyone wishing to join them must be able to perform magic (bSanh. 17)."
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