reply to post by Byrd
I didn't make it up about Tammuz you know - he's not that much of an unknown God because he got a mention in the Bible (Ezekiel 8:13-14) 13 "And he
continued on to say to me: “You will yet see again great detestable things that they are doing.” 14 So he brought me to the entrance of the gate
of the house of Jehovah, which is toward the north, and, look! there the women were sitting, weeping over the [god] Tam′muz."
In Sumerian texts, Tammuz is called Dumuzi and is identified as the consort or lover of the fertility goddess Inanna (Babylonian Ishtar). It has been
suggested that Tammuz was originally a king who was deified after his death. Sumerian texts believed to date from the 18th century B.C.E. show that
the kings of Sumer were identified with Dumuzi.
Ishtar from Babylon as you will no doubt know is identified with the mother God Isis who was the mother of Horus and consort of Osiris - so yet
another tie in which this thread's OP.
Regarding the identification of Tammuz, D. Wolkstein and S. N. Kramer remarked: “There were quite a number of ‘dying gods’ in ancient Sumer,
but the best known is Dumuzi, the biblical Tammuz, whom the women of Jerusalem were still mourning in the days of the prophet Ezekiel. Originally, the
god Dumuzi was a mortal Sumerian ruler, whose life and death had made a profound impression on the Sumerian thinkers and mythographers.” (Inanna,
Queen of Heaven and Earth, New York, 1983, p. 124) In addition, O. R. Gurney wrote: “Dumuzi was originally a man, a king of Erech . . . The
humanity of Dumuzi is, moreover, confirmed by the mythological passage in which he says to Inanna ‘I will lead you to the house of my god’. This
is not the way in which a god would speak.”—Journal of Semitic Studies, Vol. 7, 1962, pp. 150-152.
The use of the cross can be traced back to Mesopotamia, to two thousand years before Christ. Crosses even decorated Scandinavian rock engravings
during the Bronze Age, centuries before Jesus was born. Such non-Christians used the cross “as a magic sign . . . giving protection, bringing good
luck,” wrote Sven Tito Achen, Danish historian and expert on symbols, in the book Symbols Around Us. It is no wonder that the New Catholic
Encyclopedia admits: “The cross is found in both pre-Christian and non-Christian cultures, where it has largely a cosmic or natural
signification.” Why, then, have the churches chosen the cross as their most sacred symbol?
W. E. Vine, respected British scholar, offers these hard facts: “By the middle of the 3rd cent. A.D. . . . pagans were received into the
churches . . . and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence the Tau or T, . . . with the cross-piece lowered, was
adopted.”—Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words.
Vine further notes that both the noun “cross” and the verb “crucify” refer to “a stake or pale . . . distinguished from the ecclesiastical
form of a two beamed cross.” In agreement with this, Oxford University’s Companion Bible says: “The evidence is . . . that the Lord was put to
death upon an upright stake, and not on two pieces of timber placed at any angle.” Clearly, the churches have adopted a tradition that is not
Biblical.
Historian Achen, quoted above, observes: “In the two centuries after the death of Jesus it is doubtful that the Christians ever used the device of
the cross.” To the early Christians, he adds, the cross “must have chiefly denoted death and evil, like the guillotine or the electric chair to
later generations.”
The Romans and the Greeks adopted many Sumerian & Egyptian Pagan beleifs and customs and the Cross was a symbol of religious beleif long before the
birth of Christ.
This releif of an Assyrian King wearing a Cross is to be found in the British Museum in London and it is an exact match to a Celtic Cross. It dates
from around 800BCE
edit on 1-1-2012 by JB1234 because: Added for context
