The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain

Author:Leonard Shlain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-02-25T15:18:01+00:00

*A recurring choice among a diverse range of cultures was the bear.

†The senators who conspired to assassinate Julius Caesar agreed to strike simultaneously. For the same reasons, firing squads comprise many members. These are but two examples of how a group can alleviate the individual feelings of guilt for a ritual sacrifice.

*Prometheus was a prototypical martyr-god who sacrificed his welfare for the good of the many. He stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals. As punishment, Zeus chained him to a rock for eternity. Each day an avenging vulture pecked at his liver. At sundown, the vulture flew away leaving behind a small remnant. During the night Prometheus’s liver regenerated. His ordeal began anew when the vulture returned the next day. In this myth, night is a metaphor for writer and the liver’s regeneration represents the return of all the earth’s bounty after it has been consumed.

*The precession of the equinoxes due to the slight wobble of the earth’s axis changes the plane of the earth’s ecliptic causing it to move slowly through the twelve houses of the Zodiac. A passage through one house takes 2, 160 years to complete.

* After his vision, Paul left the area and traveled for three years in Asia Minor and Arabia. The worship of Cybele and Attis, her consort/son, was very popular there. Attis was tied to a tree with arms outstretched, died, and three days later returned to life through the agency of his mother.

†Most of Paul’s writings did not come directly from his own hand. He dictated them, often adding a postscript in his own rough hand.

*The Gospel of John begins three years before the Crucifixion.

*“The Jesus Seminar, a contemporary group of biblical scholars, have examined the New Testament searching for the sayings of Jesus that the majority can agree are authentic according to their strict criteria. Of those passages that they believe to be so, none mention His divine genealogy. The few enigmatic references to His being the Son of Man (which paradoxically implied He was the Son of God) are of equivocal authenticity. Luke’s solitary mention of the Annunciation is not found in the other three Gospels.

†The original Hebrew word for spirit, Ruah (which means breath), is a feminine noun. When it was translated from Hebrew to Greek she lost her femininity. Spiritus, the Latin translation of the Greek word, is a masculine noun. “Respire” and “inspire” still tie the word spirit to the word breath.

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