Merry Christmas!!

[I Have Questions]

just so people know, this thread is an example of MG trolling. Make of it as you will.

Absolutely.

[Kishkumen]

Felicem Natalem Christi!

I am a big fan of Christmas, and I think it appropriate to remind us all that the proximate origins of Christmas are not to be found in the New Testament but instead in Charles Dickens' famous novella/ghost story, A Christmas Carol, written in 1843. Seizing upon the commercial possibilities, American merchants catapulted Christmas into the Titan of a holiday it is today. Macy's first in-store visit by Santa occurred in 1962 and, in 1870, Christmas was declared a federal holiday in the United States.

We should all easily acquiesce to the celebration of Christmas and the greeting of "Merry Christmas," because, well, its significance as a modern cultural phenomenon surpasses its distant origins in the celebration of one mass. There is so much about Christmas that only glances off of the veneer of institutional Christianity, and this is why Christians around the world feel so tender about the whole thing. They need to remind themselves of "the real reason for the season," as the baroque collection of tales and rituals that have developed around their own foundation myth is so diffuse and, indeed, confusing, not to mention plain old fun, that they must pull themselves back from the precipice of pagan joy by putting on their hair shirts again.

Never fear, though. Never fear. Christianity is a Roman religion. The New Testament is written in Greek, and the whole ball of wax would have long ago melted and slipped into the sewer of history had it not been for the fact that Romans finally yielded to the new god man in their midst. Why Severus Alexander made room for Jesus right alongside Orpheus and Moses in his personal sanctuary. Sure, this one may have been a Jewish teacher whom they had once crucified for causing a public disturbance, but he was no less credible or interesting than Mithras, after all.

Now, mind you, I am not saying that Jesus is just a myth, or that Christianity is not its own bona fide religion with roots reaching back into Jewish writings and practices. Obviously it is all that. And yet it is even more than that. I join Pope Benedict in repudiating the sad joke of anti-hellenism in which certain desperate Protestants imagine--against all historical evidence to the contrary--that Christianity is a straightforward continuation of a Judaism that in reality did not begin to exist until a couple of centuries after Jesus was executed for causing a ruckus.

No! Christianity is a religion of the Roman Empire. The process of blending Hellenism and Judaism to create Christianity started centuries before Jesus was born, and it continued centuries after Jesus died. There is no Jesus without the Greeks and Romans. Even more than that, there is no Christianity without them. Christ is an anglicization of a latinization of a Greek term for a Hebrew word, messiah. Christianity has continued to evolve in all kinds of interesting directions, but those that are truest to its origins embrace the Greek and Roman contributions; they don't run away from them in a self-deluded act of desperate denial.

The fact that so many people around the world cling myopically to their own iteration of Christianity should be freeing to us all. What do we care when some dour nanny shakes a finger in our face lecturing us about the "real reason" for Christmas and why/how we should celebrate. To blazes with that! Celebrate Christmas as you like . . . or don't. No one will miss your non-participation in a global phenomenon of commerce, folklore, and tipsiness should you choose to ignore it! I prefer to keep my own version. And, yes, my version does include remembering the birth of Jesus, as told in the mythological prefaces to Matthew and Luke. Let us all remember the birth of God! What a story! And that is exactly what it is. That does not detract from the beauty of it, the power of the message of the myth.

Let me share with you another nativity--that of the god-man Augustus, who gave birth to our great Roman Empire, which lasted over 1500 years, and without whom there would be no Jesus and no Matthean and Lucan nativity myths:

According to Julius Marathus, a few months before Augustus was born a portent was generally observed at Rome, which gave warning that nature was pregnant with a king for the Roman people; thereupon the senate in consternation decreed that no male child born that year should be reared; but those whose wives were with child saw to it that the decree was not filed in the treasury,⁠137 since each one appropriated the prediction to his own family.

4 I have read the following story in the books of Asclepias of Mendes entitled Theologumena.⁠138 When Atia had come in the middle of the night to the solemn service of Apollo, she had her litter set down in the temple and fell asleep, while the rest of the matrons also slept. On a sudden a serpent⁠ 139 glided up to her and shortly went away. When she awoke, she purified herself,⁠140 as if after the embraces of her husband, and at once there appeared on her body a mark in colours like a serpent, and she could never get rid of it; so that presently she ceased ever to go to the public baths. In the tenth month after that Augustus was born and was therefore regarded as the son of Apollo. Atia too, before she gave him birth, dreamed that her vitals were borne up to the stars and spread over the whole extent of land and sea, while Octavius dreamed that the sun rose from Atia's womb.

5 The day he was born the conspiracy of Catiline was before the House, and Octavius came late because of his wife's confinement; then Publius Nigidius, as everyone knows, learning the reason for his tardiness and being informed also of the hour of the birth, declared that the ruler of the world had been born. Later, when Octavius was leading an army through remote parts of Thrace, and in the grove of Father Liber consulted the priests about his son with barbarian rites, they made the same prediction; since such a pillar of flame sprang forth from the wine that was poured over the altar, that it rose above the temple roof and mounted to the very sky, and such an omen had befallen no one save Alexander the Great, when he offered sacrifice at the same altar. 6 Moreover, the very next night he dreamt that his son appeared to him in a guise more majestic than that of mortal man, with the thunderbolt, sceptre, and insignia of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, wearing a crown begirt with rays and mounted upon a laurel-wreathed chariot drawn by twelve horses of surpassing whiteness. When Augustus was still an infant, as is recorded by the hand of Gaius Drusus,⁠141 he was placed by his nurse at evening in his cradle on the ground floor and the next morning had disappeared; but after long search he was at last found on a lofty tower with his face towards the rising sun.

I don't think it too bold to say that without the biographies of Alexander the Great and Augustus, there would have been no nativities in the Gospels. Matthew and Luke needed to make their crucified king the equal of these great men in their mythologizing. Otherwise, who would pay attention to Jesus? Why would he be thought important? No matter what Jesus actually did, it is his story that is crafted in those Gospel accounts that makes him worth remembering. The nativity myths must compete with the births of Alexander and Augustus to be suitable.

[Shulem]

Typos…late night posting…I’m going with “too much eggnog” - MG was pifflicated.

Very likely, he was drunk.

And now this thread is all about MG!

1st post: » Wed Dec 24, 2025 1:20 am
2nd post: » Wed Dec 24, 2025 9:58 am

That's an 8 hour and 38 minute break from the board. Time enough to sleep it off and get up and fix the errors.

[Gadianton]

Thanks Reverend, that's the best Christmas sermon I've ever heard.

[Shulem]

Felicem Natalem Christi!

I am a big fan of Christmas, and I think it appropriate to remind us all that the proximate origins of Christmas are not to be found in the New Testament but instead in Charles Dickens' famous novella/ghost story, A Christmas Carol, written in 1843. Seizing upon the commercial possibilities, American merchants catapulted Christmas into the Titan of a holiday it is today. Macy's first in-store visit by Santa occurred in 1962 and, in 1870, Christmas was declared a federal holiday in the United States.

We should all easily acquiesce to the celebration of Christmas and the greeting of "Merry Christmas," because, well, its significance as a modern cultural phenomenon surpasses its distant origins in the celebration of one mass. There is so much about Christmas that only glances off of the veneer of institutional Christianity, and this is why Christians around the world feel so tender about the whole thing. They need to remind themselves of "the real reason for the season," as the baroque collection of tales and rituals that have developed around their own foundation myth is so diffuse and, indeed, confusing, not to mention plain old fun, that they must pull themselves back from the precipice of pagan joy by putting on their hair shirts again.

Never fear, though. Never fear. Christianity is a Roman religion. The New Testament is written in Greek, and the whole ball of wax would have long ago melted and slipped into the sewer of history had it not been for the fact that Romans finally yielded to the new god man in their midst. Why Severus Alexander made room for Jesus right alongside Orpheus and Moses in his personal sanctuary. Sure, this one may have been a Jewish teacher whom they had once crucified for causing a public disturbance, but he was no less credible or interesting than Mithras, after all.

Now, mind you, I am not saying that Jesus is just a myth, or that Christianity is not its own bona fide religion with roots reaching back into Jewish writings and practices. Obviously it is all that. And yet it is even more than that. I join Pope Benedict in repudiating the sad joke of anti-hellenism in which certain desperate Protestants imagine--against all historical evidence to the contrary--that Christianity is a straightforward continuation of a Judaism that in reality did not begin to exist until a couple of centuries after Jesus was executed for causing a ruckus.

No! Christianity is a religion of the Roman Empire. The process of blending Hellenism and Judaism to create Christianity started centuries before Jesus was born, and it continued centuries after Jesus died. There is no Jesus without the Greeks and Romans. Even more than that, there is no Christianity without them. Christ is an anglicization of a latinization of a Greek term for a Hebrew word, messiah. Christianity has continued to evolve in all kinds of interesting directions, but those that are truest to its origins embrace the Greek and Roman contributions; they don't run away from them in a self-deluded act of desperate denial.

The fact that so many people around the world cling myopically to their own iteration of Christianity should be freeing to us all. What do we care when some dour nanny shakes a finger in our face lecturing us about the "real reason" for Christmas and why/how we should celebrate. To blazes with that! Celebrate Christmas as you like . . . or don't. No one will miss your non-participation in a global phenomenon of commerce, folklore, and tipsiness should you choose to ignore it! I prefer to keep my own version. And, yes, my version does include remembering the birth of Jesus, as told in the mythological prefaces to Matthew and Luke. Let us all remember the birth of God! What a story! And that is exactly what it is. That does not detract from the beauty of it, the power of the message of the myth.

Let me share with you another nativity--that of the god-man Augustus, who gave birth to our great Roman Empire, which lasted over 1500 years, and without whom there would be no Jesus and no Matthean and Lucan nativity myths:

According to Julius Marathus, a few months before Augustus was born a portent was generally observed at Rome, which gave warning that nature was pregnant with a king for the Roman people; thereupon the senate in consternation decreed that no male child born that year should be reared; but those whose wives were with child saw to it that the decree was not filed in the treasury,⁠137 since each one appropriated the prediction to his own family.

4 I have read the following story in the books of Asclepias of Mendes entitled Theologumena.⁠138 When Atia had come in the middle of the night to the solemn service of Apollo, she had her litter set down in the temple and fell asleep, while the rest of the matrons also slept. On a sudden a serpent⁠ 139 glided up to her and shortly went away. When she awoke, she purified herself,⁠140 as if after the embraces of her husband, and at once there appeared on her body a mark in colours like a serpent, and she could never get rid of it; so that presently she ceased ever to go to the public baths. In the tenth month after that Augustus was born and was therefore regarded as the son of Apollo. Atia too, before she gave him birth, dreamed that her vitals were borne up to the stars and spread over the whole extent of land and sea, while Octavius dreamed that the sun rose from Atia's womb.

5 The day he was born the conspiracy of Catiline was before the House, and Octavius came late because of his wife's confinement; then Publius Nigidius, as everyone knows, learning the reason for his tardiness and being informed also of the hour of the birth, declared that the ruler of the world had been born. Later, when Octavius was leading an army through remote parts of Thrace, and in the grove of Father Liber consulted the priests about his son with barbarian rites, they made the same prediction; since such a pillar of flame sprang forth from the wine that was poured over the altar, that it rose above the temple roof and mounted to the very sky, and such an omen had befallen no one save Alexander the Great, when he offered sacrifice at the same altar. 6 Moreover, the very next night he dreamt that his son appeared to him in a guise more majestic than that of mortal man, with the thunderbolt, sceptre, and insignia of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, wearing a crown begirt with rays and mounted upon a laurel-wreathed chariot drawn by twelve horses of surpassing whiteness. When Augustus was still an infant, as is recorded by the hand of Gaius Drusus,⁠141 he was placed by his nurse at evening in his cradle on the ground floor and the next morning had disappeared; but after long search he was at last found on a lofty tower with his face towards the rising sun.

I don't think it too bold to say that without the biographies of Alexander the Great and Augustus, there would have been no nativities in the Gospels. Matthew and Luke needed to make their crucified king the equal of these great men in their mythologizing. Otherwise, who would pay attention to Jesus? Why would he be thought important? No matter what Jesus actually did, it is his story that is crafted in those Gospel accounts that makes him worth remembering. The nativity myths must compete with the births of Alexander and Augustus to be suitable.

I find nothing therein to disagree with.

Excellent.

[Rivendale]

...I know folks want to recognize Joseph's birthday, and that's fine, but members of the LDS church along with other Christians celebrate the birth of the Savior as being paramount in the animals of human history.

Assuming MH(?) means 'annals,' really? When mentalgymnast has consistently given us evidence that stereotyping 'critics' is paramount to him?

It is the ministry and teachings of Jesus Christ that are at the core of what the CofJCofLDS is all about. Sometimes this is forgotten or ignored by those that change their views/focus. I realize this video presentation isn't for everyone...

Ahh, the passive-aggressive trolling from a passive-aggressive troller who wants us to know that the teachings of Christ are at his core, while he stereotypes again.

MH

Who?

Seriously, though, who uses the birth of Christ as a vehicle to express his stereotyping bigotry? Apparently mentalgymnast does.

Was MG the apologist who suggested that Melissa Lott and Emily Partridge testimonies about carnal intercourse was merely a discussion about animal products?

[Marcus]

Assuming MH(?) means 'annals,' really? When mentalgymnast has consistently given us evidence that stereotyping 'critics' is paramount to him?
Ahh, the passive-aggressive trolling from a passive-aggressive troller who wants us to know that the teachings of Christ are at his core, while he stereotypes again.

Who?

Seriously, though, who uses the birth of Christ as a vehicle to express his stereotyping bigotry? Apparently mentalgymnast does.

Was MG the apologist who suggested that Melissa Lott and Emily Partridge testimonies about carnal intercourse was merely a discussion about animal products?

No, I don't think so, although we did have a lengthy discussion about it here, so I'm sure MG put in his 2 cents worth! Runtu broke that story when an apologist left this comment on one of his blog entries. He discusses it here:

The evidence is quite clear, and it’s also clear that Emily Partridge spent the night in bed with Joseph Smith on their wedding night, and when asked, she confirmed under oath that she had “carnal intercourse” with Smith. Their wedding night was spent in the home of Benjamin Johnson, who confirmed that they occupied the same room and bed.

That would seem fairly straightforward: a man and woman who have just been married and retire to the bedroom are likely to have sexual relations. It strains credulity to believe that they would have gone to the bedroom, closed the door, and spent the night playing cards.

Apparently, it’s not that clear to some people, as I received the following comment this evening. I’m not sure why the comment came four years after the post, but here it is:

[Some words snipped in order to get to the... uh, big finish a little faster...]

...Carnal refers to meat. Intercourse refers to commerce or trade (ever visited Intercourse, PA?). Therefore “carnal intercourse” would also be a legitimate description of passing Joseph a platter of turkey or chicken or mutton or beef at a meal, an activity the young Emily had almost certainly engaged in...

https://runtu.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/ ... ologetics/

It turns out there are virtually an unlimited number of jokes, puns, and innuendos that can be derived from this ridiculous type of naïvété masquerading as apologetic scholarship.

In a thread here, Dr. Moore summed up the situation perfectly:

Looks like it was a sincere comment made by the Millennial Star blogger (and author of "Reluctant Polygamist"), Meg Stout.

Wowza. That level of gymnastics, unburdened by reasonable logic, can literally prove or justify anything.

MG doesn't call himself a mentalgymnast for no reason.

[Kishkumen]

Thanks Reverend, that's the best Christmas sermon I've ever heard.

Thank you, Dean Robbers!

[MG 2.0]

Now, mind you, I am not saying that Jesus is just a myth, or that Christianity is not its own bona fide religion with roots reaching back into Jewish writings and practices. Obviously it is all that.

Kishkumen, I enjoyed your post. I especially would like to emphasize this comment you've made. The world at the time of Jesus and His disciples was the world in which Christianity could become a worldwide religion. This, indeed, made all the difference.

Merry Christmas!

By the way, for other 'conspiracy minded' posters, H on the keyboard is next to G. Animal can be placed in the text instead of annal when using autocorrect. Oh, and also...active and believing members of the LDS church do not find themselves inebriated while doing anything.

More than can be said for some here I would guess.

And no, not trolling. Simply wishing everyone happy holidays and a Merry Christmas to those that are of the Christian faith.

We had our family over for an early Christmas Eve this afternoon. Tonight they're with their individual families. That's what happens when you start getting old!

Regards,
MG

[malkie]

Was MG the apologist who suggested that Melissa Lott and Emily Partridge testimonies about carnal intercourse was merely a discussion about animal products?

No, I don't think so, although we did have a lengthy discussion about it here, so I'm sure MG put in his 2 cents worth! Runtu broke that story when an apologist left this comment on one of his blog entries. He discusses it here:

The evidence is quite clear, and it’s also clear that Emily Partridge spent the night in bed with Joseph Smith on their wedding night, and when asked, she confirmed under oath that she had “carnal intercourse” with Smith. Their wedding night was spent in the home of Benjamin Johnson, who confirmed that they occupied the same room and bed.

That would seem fairly straightforward: a man and woman who have just been married and retire to the bedroom are likely to have sexual relations. It strains credulity to believe that they would have gone to the bedroom, closed the door, and spent the night playing cards.

Apparently, it’s not that clear to some people, as I received the following comment this evening. I’m not sure why the comment came four years after the post, but here it is:

[Some words snipped in order to get to the... uh, big finish a little faster...]

...Carnal refers to meat. Intercourse refers to commerce or trade (ever visited Intercourse, PA?). Therefore “carnal intercourse” would also be a legitimate description of passing Joseph a platter of turkey or chicken or mutton or beef at a meal, an activity the young Emily had almost certainly engaged in...

https://runtu.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/ ... ologetics/

It turns out there are virtually an unlimited number of jokes, puns, and innuendos that can be derived from this ridiculous type of naïvété masquerading as apologetic scholarship.

In a thread here, Dr. Moore summed up the situation perfectly:

Wowza. That level of gymnastics, unburdened by reasonable logic, can literally prove or justify anything.

MG doesn't call himself a mentalgymnast for no reason.

What about this (purely imaginary but totally legit) scenario.

I'm on a "business" trip. To seal the deal, the salesperson invites me to spend the night in her room.

Later I defend her honour by explaining that we ordered room service - a couple of nice steaks - and that's what my wife was mad about when she accused me of having enjoyed carnal intercourse with the sales rep.