Sunday, December 21, 2008

Answers in Genesis on Christmas

AiG has written an article attempting to answer the question, "Is Christmas a Pagan Holiday?" While they mention Saturnalia as being related to Christmas, they don't clearly identify the fact that Christmas is basically a pagan holiday with Christian meaning tacked on to it. Everything about Christmas, from the tree to the mistletoe, is pagan.

However, things get weird as they try to identify Cronus (Saturn) with a biblical character! I'm not sure how accurate their information is, as history isn't really my subject and they give no references for their information. However, I'm inclined to be suspicious, namely because of the self serving interpretation of history they have:

"The land of Greece was inhabited by the descendants of Noah’s grandson Javan. In fact, the Hebrew name for Greece is still Javan. Javan had 4 sons, and they were:

Elishah
Tarshish
Kittem (Cethimus)
Rodanim (Dodanim)

In Greece and the surrounding area, these names are still a reflection on the landscape. Many of Javan’s sons’ names and variants have cities, islands, and other geographical features named for them. Paul, the biblical author of two-thirds of the New Testament came from “Tarsus,” a variant of Tarshish. There were also the “Taurus” mountains in Turkey, and the “Tanais” is the old name for the Don River flowing into the Black Sea.
Eliseans was the old name of the ancient Greek tribe now called the Aeolians. Cethimus inhabited the island Cethima, from which the name of the island Cyprus was derived. (Josephus, a Jewish historian about 2,000 years ago, elaborated on these relationships in more detail.)
Many of the characters of Greek mythology are based on real historical figures who were raised up to godlike status. One example here is “Hellen,” the alleged mythological patriarch and god of the Aeolians (or Elisians). Hellen (Ἕλλην) is likely a variant of Elishah.3 Even in other cultures, ancestors were often deified; for example, in Germanic and Norse mythologies there is Tiras (Tyras, Tiwaz, Tyr), who was the king of the gods and also happens to be one of Noah’s grandsons (Genesis 10:2).
So it makes sense that Cronus/Kronos (Κρόνος), a variant of Cethimas/Kittem, could have been raised up to godlike status. Considering that Noah and his early descendants were living such long lives, it should be obvious why many of these ancestors were raised up to be “god-like.” Not only did they live long lives, but they were obviously the oldest people around and would seem to be the people (gods, demigods) that started civilization. Noah would have been roughly 500 years older than anyone else and his sons approximately 100 years older. We know this was because of the Flood, but the true message would quickly be changed to fit the pagan ideas. Thus it is interesting that this pagan festival was likely born as a result of a suppressed view of a biblical character."

2 comments:

Luke O'Dell said...

Even the Bible says christmas trees are for heathens. So much for the literal interpretation, eh Ken?

Anonymous said...

Proof that AiG is making it all up while engrossed in blatant ignorance of these Greek heroes/deities being characters outside the Bible and are not mentioned in every biblical literature known with the exception of Diana of Ephesus, Hermes, and Zeus.