Thursday, December 31, 2015

Banias Spring

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

I'll put the search strings in bold, these are the beginning of a quote, and the link(s), the ulr(s), which are highlighted too, will be the quote(s) end(s)...


Well, well,...hmmph...I've been mulling over the 'great god pan' to make a post for the last few days...it's not easy!...I hadn't ever given Pan much thought...just smiles and laughs when I see him surrounded by nymphs and satyrs in cartoons!...don't know but the celebrants tonight, New Years, will be behaving panlike!...Happy New Year!...wiki's take has it that the medieval Christians morphed Pan into the Devil, borrowing the goat legs and horns and such...don't know but that iconographic image has always been a bit cartoonish to me too!...I should take such serious, I guess, as there were those over history that have, and still do, and to some extent such have made the 'history' I live in...

Plutarch great god Pan dead

According to the Greek historian Plutarch (in De defectu oraculorum, "The Obsolescence of Oracles"),[29] Pan is the only Greek god (other than Asclepius) who actually dies. During the reign of Tiberius (A.D. 14–37), the news of Pan's death came to one Thamus, a sailor on his way to Italy by way of the island of Paxi. A divine voice hailed him across the salt water, "Thamus, are you there? When you reach Palodes,[30] take care to proclaim that the great god Pan is dead." Which Thamus did, and the news was greeted from shore with groans and laments.


Pan (god)


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
 
The story has long been seen as a symbolic representation of the death of the Classical world and its replacement by Christianity -- a process which actually occurred, with much strife and agony, over the next few centuries.
Clash of Civilizations: The Great God Pan is Dead

Caesarea Philippi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
 
Caesarea Philippi Jesus
 
When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? 14And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. 15He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? 16And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. 17And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. 18And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 20Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ.
 
 
Gates of Hell Pan
 
The pagans of Jesus' day commonly believed that their fertility gods lived in the underworld during the winter and returned to earth each spring. They saw water as a symbol of the underworld and thought that their gods traveled to and from that world through caves. To the pagan mind, then, the cave and spring water at Caesarea Philippi created a gate to the underworld. They believed that their city was literally at the gates of the underworld—the gates of hell.

http://v2.followtherabbi.com/journey/faith-lesson/gates-of-hell

My Jewish friend informed me that there were parts of the Bible that only a student over forty years old could, or should, read......but it's a lovely place, the springs where the old temple of Pan is remembered still...

temple Pan....

Walkers  

The Banias Spring emerges at the foot of Mount Hermon and flows powerfully through a canyon for 3.5 km, eventually leading to the Banias Waterfall, the most impressive cascade in Israel. Nine kilometers from its source, the Hermon Stream meets the Dan, and together they form the Jordan River.
Israel Nature and Parks Authority

http://old.parks.org.il/BuildaGate5/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~25~~837878172~Card12~&ru=&SiteName=parks

and while much is made of Jesus opposing the worship of Pan, though I don't quite see that, there are those whose suggest the opposite, and a self similarity, seeing in Pan a shepherd like Jesus...

Jesus Pan Shepherd

But the similarities are there. For example, they were both shepherds, after a fashion. Also, neither of them were entirely divine: Jesus was supposed to be one hundred percent divine and one hundred percent human simultaneously, and Pan was likewise a god and "also an earthly being, by virtue of his mother Dryope, his occupation, and his association with man. This fusion of the human and divine in one creature has led many later Christian poets most notably Milton to describe Pan as a pagan prefiguration of Jesus Christ" (Baker 11). The crucial point here, however, is that such comparisons were made by poets and mostly poets who lived after the Reformation not by priests or bishops of the Church and certainly not by any of the popes.

The Demonization of Pan.
Kevin Hearne (c) 1998

http://www.mesacc.edu/~thoqh49081/StudentPapers/pan.html

hmmph...like I said, a difficult post!...and in the reading was this at wiki's Jordan River take...

Jordan River

The use of Jordan River's water was cited as a cause of the war by Ariel Sharon, who said,
People generally regard June 5, 1967, as the day the Six Day War began. That is the official date, but in reality it started two and a half years earlier on the day Israel decided to act against the diversion of the Jordan River.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_River

Oh, the old Roman name for the Greek god Pan was Faunus, where our word 'fauna' comes from...

DavidDavid






 
 
 
 
 
 
 




2 comments:

Jeannette said...

Happy New Year, David. Seek and you shall find...you certainly are doing a lot of research.

DavidDavid said...

To be a student, to be humble...:)