{"id":60562,"date":"2016-04-14T07:00:48","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T14:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=60562"},"modified":"2016-04-14T08:40:18","modified_gmt":"2016-04-14T15:40:18","slug":"zodiac-and-apostles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2016\/04\/14\/zodiac-and-apostles\/","title":{"rendered":"The Zodiac and The Apostles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"star-constellation-pisces_7ef64f822dc1659b\"<\/p>\n

One of my friends recently shared a video<\/a> on Facebook which is an excerpt from the notorious movie Zeitgeist. The narrator in the opening frames rather nicely summarizes its\u00a0main argument:<\/p>\n

“Now, probably the most obvious of all the astrological symbolism around Jesus regards the 12 disciples. They are simply the 12 constellations of the Zodiac<\/span>, which Jesus, being the Sun, travels about with. In fact, the number 12 is replete throughout the Bible:<\/span><\/p>\n

12 Tribes of Israel<\/span>
\n 12 Brothers of Joseph<\/span>
\n 12 Judges of Israel<\/span>
\n 12 Great Patriarchs<\/span>
\n 12 Old Testament Prophets<\/span>
\n 12 Princes of Israel<\/span>
\n Jesus in Temple at 12<\/span><\/p>\n

This text (the Bible) has more to do with astrology than anything else”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like most things in the Zeitgeist movie, the claims can initially appear convincing until you do a little bit of thinking and\u00a0a smidgen\u00a0of research.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Factual Mistakes<\/h3>\n

As usual, Zeitgeist contains more than a few inaccuracies:<\/p>\n

Factual Mistake #1:<\/strong> Joseph had eleven brothers, not twelve. That entry should really read “12 Sons of Jacob”.<\/p>\n

Factual Mistake #2:<\/strong> There were not 12 kings of Israel.<\/p>\n

Factual Mistake #3:<\/strong> There were far\u00a0more than twelve Old Testament prophets. If I had to guess, I’d say that the author of the movie is assuming that there were twelve because there is a collection of twelve books in the Bible of the minor<\/strong> prophets. The trouble with this is that it excludes the major ones (Isaiah, Jeremiah, …) as well as the others which are mentioned but who go unnamed.<\/p>\n

This does’t exactly fill one with confidence in their scholarly ability.<\/p>\n

The Chain of Twelves<\/h3>\n

The first important factor to note is that the twelves which appear in the Bible can be traced back to one important twelve.\u00a0The Patriarch Jacob (who is later renamed “Israel”) has twelve sons. These sons produce families, giving rise to twelve tribes, which make up the nation of Israel.\u00a0Virtually all of the other instances of twelves\u00a0flow from this.<\/p>\n

For example, twelve princes are assembled to administer the affairs, one per tribe.\u00a0Moses sends twelve spies into Canaan, one representative from each tribe. It is because there were twelve tribes that Jesus chose twelve Apostles to mystically represent Israel.<\/p>\n

Jacob arrived first<\/h3>\n

There is, however, one other very important fact which undermines this entire argument. The birth of Jacob’s twelve sons predate the establishment of the twelve-sign zodiac in c. 500 BC! Since the\u00a0real<\/strong> Biblical significance of the number twelve can be logically traced back to Jacob, it makes no sense to argue that the Bible stole from an astrological system which hadn’t yet come into existence!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my friends recently shared a video on Facebook which is an excerpt from the notorious movie Zeitgeist. The narrator in the opening frames rather nicely summarizes its\u00a0main argument: “Now, probably the most obvious of all the astrological symbolism around Jesus regards the 12 disciples. They are simply the 12 constellations of the Zodiac, which Jesus, being the Sun,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2969,757,1176,2886,3647],"class_list":["post-60562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","tag-featured","tag-jacob","tag-twelve","tag-zeitgeist","tag-zodiac"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/constellations.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60562"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61365,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60562\/revisions\/61365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}