S. A. Joyce wrote:
>>> "H.E. Eickleberry, Jr."
verizon.net> wrote in message
>>> news:KrIcj.1288$ML6.1015@trndny04...>>>>>
>>>>> "H.E. Eickleberry, Jr."
verizon.net> wrote in
>>>>> message news:xvwbj.4548$Pt6.1373@trndny07...>>>>>>> Aesthetics aside, "the bright and morning star" is evidently a
>>>>>>> translation of the Greek "Phosphoros" ("light-bearer"), a common name
>>>>>>> for what we call the planet Venus. But the interesting bit is what
>>>>>>> "Phosphoros" ("light-bearer") becomes when translated into Latin (as
>>>>>>> in the Vulgate): "Lucifer."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I wouldn't want to rankle anyone by drawing an obvious inference from
>>>>>>> this, but I thought it might be fun for you folks to puzzle over.
>>>>>>> What puzzles me is why you see fit to post this dizzy stuff to a
>>>>>>> philosophy group, where circularity has a well-deserved stigma
>>>>>>> attached to it.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Best wishes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks, but there is nothing to puzzle over: For every thesis there is
>>>>>> an antithesis, and every prophetic symbolism can be used generally,
>>>>>> thetically, and/or antithetically.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> That Lucifer thinks he is the morning star only highlights his
>>>>>> contempt for Jesus, who IS the morning star. Thus we find the use of
>>>>>> the symbolic term applied to both, one in irony, and one in truth.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Ike
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm afraid you misunderstand.
>>>>
>>>> Ah, no, I understand just fine...
>>>>
>>>>> It's not the case that "Lucifer thinks he's the morning star."
>>>>> "Lucifer" is the Latin word for "the morning star," a popular name for
>>>>> the pre-dawn appearance of the planet Venus. In other words, "Lucifer"
>>>>> (literally meaning "light bearer") IS "the morning star." The terms are
>>>>> synonymous.
>>>>
>>>> Which illustrates Satan's belief in himself ascending to the throne of
>>>> God and presiding over the congregation of God.
>>>>
>>>> Lucifer THINKS he is the morning star.
>>>>
>>> Oops! That just illustrates that you did not really understand what I'd
>>> said. But maybe that was my fault, so let's try again. We started with
>>> *Satan,* so let's stick with *Satan* unless there's reason to do
>>> otherwise.
>>>
>>>> ... Satan's belief in himself ascending to the throne of God and
>>>> presiding over the congregation of God.
>>> *Satan* THINKS he is the morning star.
>>>
>>> I shan't quibble with you about what Satan believes or thinks. He's your
>>> demon, not mine.
>>>
>>> But I do happen to know something about Latin, despite being more than a
>>> little rusty. So if you'd like to acquire a little insight into the
>>> "lucifer" matter (perhaps in the interest of not making some
>>> embarrassingly silly remark in the presence of a linguist, a historian,
>>> or a priest), I'm offering you some information. Use it or not, as you
>>> like, but do try to comprehend it. Although it has a little to do with
>>> elementary astronomy, it's not rocket science.
>>>
>>> Whether or not the "lucifer" moniker has since been borrowed by Satan or
>>> Jesus or the wicked stepmother's cat, as I've already pointed out, its
>>> actual meaning is something else. Literally, "lucifer" is Latin for
>>> "light-bearer." "Lucifer" / "light-bearer" was the Romans' term for the
>>> bright "star" that rises over the eastern horizon before daybreak and (in
>>> the minds of the ancients) seemed to bring the sun up behind it. In
>>> English, we call it "the morning star," i.e., the pre-dawn appearance of
>>> the planet Venus (and thus not a true star). To put it as plainly as I
>>> can:
>>>
>>> "lucifer" (Latin) = "the morning star" (English)...
>>>
>>> "the morning star" (English) = "lucifer" (Latin)...
>>>
>>> ...just as both "lucifer" and "morning star" = "phosphoros" in Greek...
>>>
>>> ... = "helel" in Hebrew...
>>>
>>> ... = "der Morgenstern" in German...
>>>
>>> ... = "l'�toile du matin" in French...
>>>
>>> ... = other spellings and utterances in myriad other languages, with the
>>> identical meaning: "the planet Venus."
>>>
>>> Comprende?
>>>
>>> I suggest letting that sink in for a minute or two before continuing.
>>> Maybe reread the "lucifer = morning star, morning star = lucifer" part a
>>> few times, until you've ironed out any difficulty with it. Otherwise,
>>> the following might seem confusing.
>>>
>>> Now, going back to...
>>> "Satan thinks he's the morning star,"
>>> ...we could stick in the Latin term in place of the English, and get...
>>> "Satan thinks he's lucifer."
>>>
>>> But we couldn't sensibly say "Lucifer thinks he's the morning star,"
>>> because lucifer IS the morning star. The morning star doesn't think it's
>>> the morning star, because stars, having no brains (as far as we can
>>> tell), don't think. Ditto for planets. (At least not the stars in the
>>> sky. Whether Hollywood stars, sports stars, and rock stars think is
>>> another matter, upon which I am most emphatically undecided at the
>>> moment.)
>>>
>>> [By the way, as I was checking my sources, I found that the first person
>>> known to have associated the term "lucifer" with Satan was none other
>>> than St. Jerome--the fellow who first translated the Hebrew and Greek
>>> scriptures into Latin (the Vulgate Bible), around the year 400. Before
>>> then, the only meaning of "lucifer" had just been "light bearer" /
>>> "morning star" / "planet Venus," as the Romans used and understood it.
>>> Thus it turns out that the concept of Lucifer-as-Satan was not envisioned
>>> by any biblical prophet, king, priest, scribe, or apostle of either OT or
>>> NT. Instead, it was confabulated by a monk centures after the scriptures
>>> had been written, and decades after they'd been selected at the first
>>> Council of Nicaea. So we can thank / blame dear old Jerome for the
>>> infernal confusion that stuffed words into the mouths of prophets long
>>> dead! (I suppose we could even charge anyone who perpetuates the
>>> nonsense as a blesphemer. But that would be a hell of a lot of
>>> blasphemers, wouldn't it?)]
>>>
>> I don't doubt that you found it in a book that St. Jerome
>> is the first who associated "lucifer" with Satan, but it
>> seems to me that it is easy to deduce this, since the
>> passage speaking of him as being Lucifer so easily shows
>> that this is Satan that is being addressed.
>
> If that's the case, you might want to explain it to all those historians,
> linguists, and theologians, who have thoroughly analyzed the text in Latin
> and compared it to the original Hebrew, who are familiar with the historical
> socio-political milieu of that place and time, and who have subsequently
> concluded that this instance of the "Lucifer" metaphor most likely refers to
> Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon and oppressor of the Jews from 597 to 538
> BCE.
>
>> This is in chapter
>> 14 of Isaiah, and it prophesies saying that this one, Lucifer,
>> has fallen from Heaven, which identifies him as being a
>> fallen angel. It says he endeavers to raise himself above
>> the throne of God, and that by him the whole earth was
>> made to tremble. It says that later people will look at him
>> narrowly, that means that they shall squint their eyes with
>> contempt in them towards what he's tried to do, I believe.
>> People reading this in the first century would have poured
>> over every word of it, discussing what was meant by
>> Isaiah and how this seems to be referring to none other
>> than Satan. The king that originally is addressed in the
>> passage did not do those things listed. The whole earth did
>> not tremble because of him. Nor was he fallen from Heaven.
>
> No, not literally. But this prophecy is metaphorical in nature. The
> Babylonian Empire "ruled the world" that was known to the Hebrews at the
> time. Metaphorically, Nebuchadnezzar had made the earth tremble in 597 BCE
> when he crushed the Judean rebellion and exiled the Jews, and again in 586
> when he destroyed the Temple at Jerusalem, and thereby "endeavored to rise
> above the throne of [the Hebrew] God." And he figuratively fell from the
> "heaven" of great rulers when he was deposed by the Persians in 538. How
> can we be sure that this reference is metaphorical? Because the planet
> Venus (Helel / Phosphoros / Lucifer) hasn't fallen from heaven; it's still
> up there, almost as bright as ever (discounting effects of smog).
>
> A first-century CE reader would never have come across the "Lucifer"
> reference, since that didn't appear until the Hebrew and Greek scriptures
> (in which "the morning star" is "helel" and "phosophoros" respectively) were
> translated intto Latin, in which the morning star is known as "lucifer" (the
> light-bearer). We know these are not references to the sun, because they
> are the names given by the ancients to the morning aspect of the planet we
> call Venus. If they'd been alluding to the sun, they'd have used "helios"
> (Greek) and "sol" (Latin). Jerome would thus have called Satan "Sol"
> instead of "Lucifer," and so on.
>
>> So Isaiah is prophesying what the Lord is telling him to say,
>> and the address is straight through the king, and to the one
>> who pulls the strings that makes the king be evil, which is
>> Satan who has made his power play trying to take over.
>
> Pretty neat trick for a prophet who'd never heard of Satan, since the
> Hebrews didn't adopt the Satan concept until more than a century and a half
> after Isaiah's death. Come to think of it, Isaiah's contemporaries wouldn't
> have heard of Satan either, so they wouldn't have understood such a prophecy
> if Isaiah had actually made it. Consequently, they likely would have stoned
> Isaiah as a blasphemer rather than esteemed him as a prophet. As it turns
> out, though, Isaiah died in 692 BCE, and the second and third prophecies
> attributed to him weren't made until more than a century and a half later.
> (Why? Well, there could be various reasons. But the most charitable one I
> can think of is that prophecy in times of oppressive tyranny can be
> extremely hazardous to one's health. Perhaps the actual anonymous prophet
> arranged to have it credited to the long-dead Isaiah as the source, in order
> to save his own skin.)
>
>> So, I just wanted to make the point that those that claim
>> that St. Jerome was the first to notice this is really a stretch.
>
> It's not that Jerome "noticed" it, because it didn't exist as such until he
> actually established such a connection. He took what previously--to all the
> biblical prophets, kings, and apostles--had been nothing more than a
> metaphorical allusion, and misinterpreted it as a literal name or identity
> of Satan. In itself it was a subtle change, but it had enormous
> implications. For it potentially altered--centuries after-the-fact--any
> prophecy or other biblical allusion to "the morning star," "the coming of
> day," "angel of light," or any other such expression that might translate
> into Latin as "lucifer," thereby creating a bogus channel for Lucifer (not
> Lucifer the morning star, but Lucifer-as-Satan) to be held responsible for
> all kinds of mischief all the way back to Genesis, 3,500 years before he was
> even conceived. (Ironically, this suggests that Satan is more powerful than
> God, since the Bible makes no claim that God ever did anything without first
> being in existence himself.)
>
> What Jerome did in effect was to conflate lucifer--the Latin word for the
> morning star--with the Judaeo-Christian demon Satan, on the sole basis that
> they are sometimes referred to by the same term, even though they are
> completely different things. Such an erroneous conflation is called an
> "equivocation error," a logical fallacy. Great scholars and simple laymen
> alike have been unwittingly tripping over it ever since.
>
>> I think St. Jerome if he could say something about now
>> would agree with that. I would not want to take away from
>> his discovery, though, I certainly would credit him with
>> making that notation and himself prophesying with his
>> statements he must have made about this.
>
> Any changes in prophecy that resulted from Jerome's goof are not new
> prophecy, but simply distortions of the original. (Fundamentalists
> categorically condemn "liberal interpretation" of scripture, but apparently
> it's okay if it happens to suit their agenda.)
>
>>>> Jesus IS the morning star.
>>>>
>>> Okay, Ike, whatever you say:
>>>
>>> Jesus IS the morning star.
>>> The morning star IS the planet Venus.
>>> Therefore, Jesus IS the planet Venus.
>>>
>>> All in plain English. That's where it leads. Happy?
>>>
>> It leads to even more of a metaphor. When Jesus was
>> resurrected, he promised another like himself which
>> he called "the Comforter." That is the indwelling
>> presence (sealed to presence) of the Holy Spirit which
>> comes to live inside of a man who says he will now
>> follow Christ and put his trust in him and do what he
>> tells him to do with his life. The Comforter is himself
>> the Lord, but in his Spirit form. Because the Lord is
>> so wonderful, he can be in Heaven and at the same
>> time dwell in the hearts of men who turn to him, and
>> look to him for sustainance and salvation. This is that
>> "Daystar" that shall rise in one's heart every day when
>> he wakes up and pays attention to the agenda that the
>> Lord has mapped out for the person that day. This also,
>> is overlooked as being only the planet Venus. It is not
>> referring only to that planet, or maybe not at all, because
>> the most obvious morning star and or daystar is the sun,
>> which people forget is a star, itself.
>
> If the "sun" had been intended, it would have been called "Helios" in Greek
> and "Sol" in Latin. Phosphoros and Lucifer are the respective names of the
> morning aspect of the planet Venus.
>
>> It rises every single
>> day from our perspective on the earth. The sun is our
>> daystar, and Jesus is the one that is the SON that is our
>> Daystar given by Almighy God to us.
>
> The "sun"-"son" connection exists only in English, which didn't emerge as a
> language (from Celtic and Scandinavian roots) until about the ninth century
> CE. There is no such connection in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. Do you also
> suppose there's some mystical connection between SATAN and SANTA, or between
> GOD and DOG? You're welcome, of course, to base your notions on such
> accidents of language if you like. But if you do, I would caution you that
> you won't be taken seriously, except by small children, and perhaps by some
> adults who think like small children.
>
>> To those of us who
>> have put out trust in him, and who do commit to follow
>> him by faith.
>>>
>> Suzanne
>>
> FYI
> --
> =SAJ=
> [Delete SPAM from address to reply.]
>
http://tangents.home.att.net/
>
> [I often reply to all newsgroups in the original poster's list. Since I
> currently subscribe only to alt.philosophy, any reply to this message should
> be directed to that group. Thanks.]
You were correct that the planet Venus was not connected with the
worship of the 'goddess' Venus.
However, the planet Venus was associated with worship of 'other gods'
i.e. gods other than the God of the OT.
Eophoros/Phosphoros (meaning dawn-bringer) and Hesperos/Hesperus
(meaning evening) were the Greek ‘gods’ associated with the star/
planet Venus whose Latin names were LUCIFER/Luciferus and Vesperus/
Vesper respectively.
