Your heart to my heart pressed unzips this skin,
it shakes the roots so cold of aching teeth,
it shivers raw these bones laid bare, unsheathed
from weary muscles worn and sanded thin.
This roiling tongue afire, it trips to pin
unearthly syllables to empty air.
I know, I see! how awful and how fair –
your judgment from these burning lips to win.
You draw my feet to this eternal brink
between the embers ashed and healing light,
engulfed to drown in incandescent drink!
May all my body’s broken bonds be linked,
the forging of my eyes be turned to sight,
your name be glowing there each time I blink.

Of course, I make no secret on this blog of the fact that I am a Christian. However, I am not only bothered by the film’s blatant inaccuracies regarding the historicity of Jesus, but also by the disingenuous methods that Zeitgeist employs throughout all sections of the film, even when examining troubling questions about the 9/11 attacks and the nefarious influence of central banking on every facet of modern life. What follows is a list of problems I have identified with Zeitgeist‘s supposed factual evidence, with its methods of conveying that information, and with the reductionistic conclusions which it ultimately tries to peddle to its hapless audience.

The first third of the movie makes the claim that the “elite” use religion (in America, the Christian religion) to keep the common people blind, ignorant, and easily malleable to their will. While I certainly won’t deny that many of the basic tenets of the Gospel of Jesus Christ have been mishandled, twisted, distorted, perverted, subverted, and ignored outright by the hierarchy of the institutionalized Christian Church, the film’s creators did not bother with making a distinction between Christianity as a faith and Christianity as a bastardized religious institution. Instead, they go on to try and prove that Jesus is basically a plagiarized sun-god myth ripped from the pages of ancient pagan religious texts, with a heady dose of astrology thrown in for good measure. There are so many problems with this section of the film that it is difficult to know where to even begin.

Zeitgeist attempts to prove that Jesus is merely one solar messiah among many solar messiah myths and it does so predicated on the idea Jesus was born on December 25th. However, even a cursory inquiry into the date of Jesus’ birth reveals that it is almost certain that he was not born on the traditional Christmas date. The Gospels themselves make no mention of a specific date, but Luke records the time in which John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, was conceived and then states that Jesus was conceived some six months after John. Consulting the Hebrew calendar based on the time that John was conceived plus the six month interval between then and the conception of Jesus yields a birth date sometime in September, probably during the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. The December 25th date was accepted in the centuries following establishment of Christianity, probably in order to compete with the numerous pagan sun-god festivals that were celebrated on that date. It was a way for the Church to try and win converts. Most importantly, if the story of Jesus were nothing more than a first-century Jewish sect’s attempt to syncretize their belief in a coming Messiah with various pagan sun-god myths then surely they would’ve explicitly named December 25th as Jesus’ birth date.

The film goes on to draw an astrological (and thus, pagan) correlation between events of Jesus’ life and the various forms of pagan sun worship found in antiquity. For instance, the movie states that on December 25th, the three stars in the constellation Orion’s belt line up with the star Sirius, and that this would lead the three magi to “the birth of the sun, God’s sun”, i.e. the sunrise in the east. Further strengthening this thought is the claim that the three stars in Orion’s belt are nicknamed “The Three Kings”. This is problematic for two reasons: 1) The Gospel of Matthew is the only book that mentions the magi and it does not specify how many of them visited Jesus. It only says “wise men from the East came to Jerusalem”; it could have been two, three, or eight who made the journey. 2) The magi came from the east and were traveling to the west. Therefore, plain logic dictates that they would not find the place of the sunrise, the “birthplace of the solar-messiah” by heading in the direction of the sunset. They would, however, find Bethlehem by traveling in that direction.

Furthermore, in seeking to paint Jesus as a mere figment of fanciful syncretism, Zeitgeist confidently informs us that the major elements of Jesus’ life – his virgin birth, his miracles, the twelve disciples, his death by crucifixion, and his resurrection – were plagiarized from the stories of various pagan deities, especially the ancient Egyptian god Horus. To put it plainly, this is nonsense. Horus, originally a sky god, and later associated with both the sun and the moon, was the incestuous product of his mother, the goddess Isis, and the dismembered and reassembled body of his father, Osiris (complete with artificial penis, since the original member was destroyed). In this story, there is neither a virgin birth, nor is there a crucifixion, nor is there a true resurrection, since Horus is, at best, a quasi-incestuous reincarnation of his dead father Osiris. The movie also references the story of Mithra, an ancient Persian deity, as another source of the “Jesus myth”. However, the movie fails to mention that Mithra was alternatively born, according various takes on the myth, from a rock in a cave, from a tree, or from a cosmic egg, but never from a human virgin. Although the film claims that Mithra was associated with the title “lamb of God”, this is untrue, as he actually is best known for the act of slaying the bull of heaven for the benefit of mankind. How the filmmakers could so badly conflate their symbolism here is beyond me. Typologically, a meek and gentle lamb is hardly synonymous with a bull, which represents strength, aggression, and virility. Moreover, bathing in the blood of a bovine sacrifice hardly passes as a parallel for the Christian practice of water baptism. There is also, contrary to the film, no evidence that Mithra had twelve disciples, was crucified, or was resurrected. Apparently, such discrepancies are small potatoes in the eyes of Zeitgeist‘s creators, since they couldn’t be troubled to actually provide the details of these alleged pagan correlations to the story of Jesus. What’s more, many of these ancient mystery religions continued to develop after the establishment of Christianity and it is likely that they took some amount of influence from this upstart faith that they found themselves competing with, rather than the other way around.

The point remains, if you cast your net far and wide enough, are willing to make rather large leaps in logic, and readily omit any incongruous details, you could find syncretic elements between the Gospel and any other pagan religious tradition out there. After all, dualistic themes such as light vs. darkness, good vs. evil, life vs. death, etc. populate virtually every religious and mythological tradition in human history. This widespread commonality does not preclude the idea that one of these stories might have actually happened in history. Syncretism of the sort that Zeitgeist proposes for the story of Jesus Christ, then, appears to exist largely in the eye of the beholder.

Zeitgeist also draws several unwarranted conclusions concerning non-Christian historical sources concerning the life of Jesus. The most egregious of these is their assertion that Flavius Josephus’ mention of Jesus is a forgery. This is, at best, a half-truth, for it appears that only half of Josephus’ comments on Jesus were forged. The passage from Josephus’ Testamonium Flavianum as handed down through history reads as follows (with the likely forged sections in bold):

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

Almost certainly, a non-Christian Jew would not have affirmed the resurrection of Jesus, nor would he have written in such glowing terms that Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah. This is rightly called a forgery and has been for some time. The problem is that the film paints the entire passage with the broad brush of falsification. The trend in modern scholarship, however, strongly argues for partial authenticity in this passage, and this from a diverse array of academic perspectives. Not surprisingly, the only people who seem to favor the idea of total fabrication are the Jesus-was-naught-but-a-myth folks! In any case, when one removes the explicitly Christian sections of the passage, which were almost certainly added later by a Christian scribe, scholars have concluded that the passage is basically genuine in terms of vocabulary, style, and religious persuasion. As such, it would read something like this:

At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following among many Jews and among many of Gentile origin. And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. And up until this very day the tribe of Christians (named after him) had not died out.

For a more in-depth look at this issue, visit this site, which is where I got most of my information. At any rate, it should be clear that Zeitgeist fails to present an objective look at what the non-Christian historical record has to say about Jesus, as it does on several other items just as crucial as this one. No opposing viewpoints are offered, no alternative perspectives are explored, nothing but textbook propaganda. And continuing in this vein are two completely absurd instances of prooftexting in the film’s first section.

At one point the narration tries to identify the man carrying a jar of water in the Synoptic Gospels’ Passover account as a symbol of the constellation Aquarius, stretching the fabric of both the biblical text and plain logic itself until they both threaten to tear. The original text reads as follows:

Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they killed the Passover lamb, His disciples said to Him, “Where do You want us to go and prepare, that You may eat the Passover?” And He sent out two of His disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water; follow him. Wherever he goes in, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is the guest room in which I may eat the Passover with My disciples?”‘ Then he will show you a large upper room, furnished and prepared; there make ready for us.” (Mark 14:12-15)

Is there any good reason to read an astrological interpretation into this simple story of Jesus and his disciples preparing to eat the Passover together? The obvious answer to anyone familiar with the Gospel narrative is, No. So why does the film insist on this laughable extrapolation? Uh, well, because Aquarius is often depicted as a man pouring water out of a jar. Ah yes! Those sneaky Gospel writers, slipping in hidden references to the Zodiac when they couldn’t even bother to properly identify Jesus’ birth date! I’ve watched the film twice now, and both times this point struck me as the most obvious example of the filmmakers grasping at straws to make their astrological-solar-messiah case. The sad part is that I’m sure there are many well-meaning folks stroking their chins at this point in the film – having been bombarded with relentless agitprop thus far, and having given their critical thinking skills the day off – who are taken in by this sort of twaddle.

The other ridiculous use of prooftexting occurs in the film’s treatment of the Golden Calf story from the book of Exodus. Supposedly, Moses represents the advent of a new astrological age, the Age of Aries the Ram, and he got really steamed about the Israelites’ worship of the golden calf not because they were brazenly committing the sin of idolatry but because, astrological ignoramuses that they were, they didn’t realize that a new age was on the way and the Age of Taurus the Bull was over. Interesting how a monotheistic Jew like Moses who had just spent the last forty days receiving God’s law would care so much for a pagan astrological-religious observance regarding the shift from one age to the next. Might a simpler and more reasonable explanation for his anger be that one of the Ten Commandments states explicitly, “You shall not make a graven image”? But what was Zeitgeist’s justification for annunciating the Golden Calf incident as the supposed dawning of a new astrological age? Er, well, you see the Jews used to blow a ram’s horn like a trumpet, etc. etc. . . . Preposterous!

I should also briefly mention a few additional examples of Zeitgeist‘s underhanded means of conveying its “facts”. One neat little trick that they pull is to caricature the popular understanding of Christian orthodoxy in a cute, two-minute segment that uses cartoon graphics and a clip from one of George Carlin’s stand-up routines (uncredited, actually). Sorry, but straw-man arguments and stand-up comedy are simply not the proper tools for a serious examination of the theological and moral issues that the film so flippantly dismisses. Zeitgeist is guilty of this same error again when it uses black and white footage from an old silent movie about the life of Jesus in order to recount the Gospel story. Somehow, nothing quite makes hokum out of the resurrection like showing Jesus “rise from the dead” by being lifted out of a square hole in the floor of a 1920′s movie set.

Even in the 9/11 section of the movie, these dishonest methods of persuasion abound. News broadcasts from that tragic day are dubbed over with narration meant to be taken as the voice of the actual newscasters, when it is, in fact, quite clearly someone connected with film who is speaking. And though this section of the film raises many excellent questions about the veracity of the official 9/11 story, no room is given for opposing or alternate viewpoints regarding any of these questions. This is lamentable, since they actually could’ve presented experts (physicists, law enforcement types, etc.) whose views support the official version of events and then used their own experts to expose the flaws in the arguments for the party line. This would’ve strengthened, rather than weakened, their case that 9/11 was a false flag operation carried out by elements of the U.S. government for the purposes of manipulating and ultimately enslaving the general public.

The third section of the movie focuses on the evils of central banking and how the “global elite” use this institution to engineer complete global domination. This section is informative for the economic neophyte, and for those who have never read the likes of Hayek, Mises, et. al. However, included here are a wealth of incriminating quotes attributed to the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, and other such Illuminati types. What is not included are sources for these quotes. No mention of context, time, place, nothing. Again, though this part of the film is the most compelling of all its sections, its impact is enfeebled by this lack of competent sourcing.

In conclusion, Zeitgeist makes many assertions that are poorly explained and insufficiently supported. In addition, it tells many an outright fib. The most arrant of these is that Jesus is a syncretized solar-messiah myth. From this idea, the film’s creators draw the remarkable conclusion that people must abandon their faith in Christianity (and all other religions, for that matter) in order to have a prayer of escaping the pernicious machinations of a shadowy cabal of global elites bent on establishing a worldwide totalitarian nightmare. Really, now? And this is all so terribly reductionistic. Religion = corrupt institution of the elite, Jesus = solar-messiah myth disseminated by said elite, Faith in Christ = naive slavery to said elite, Disavowing Christ = the beginning of enlightenment, etc. ad nauseum. I’ve got news for the filmmakers: I’ve been a believer in Jesus Christ for years, I’ve questioned the official story of 9/11 for years, and I’ve opposed central banking for years. Incredibly, after riding roughshod over its audience for two and half hours with terrifying image after terrifying image, the film’s last five minutes breathlessly conclude with a maudlin exhortation to reject fear and embrace love. The effect ends up being something like this:

Have I SCARED THE LAST DROP OF PISS OUT OF YOU YET?! Good, causeweshouldalljustrejectfearandchooselovekthnxbye!

I wonder, then, what Zeitgeist‘s creators have against the Gospel of Jesus Christ, since according to Jesus himself, the two greatest rules for human behavior are to love God with all your being and to love your neighbor as yourself. And one need only peruse the history of the early church to see evidence of a vital, living faith which refused to submit to the worst tyranny of its day, the murderous reigns of a succession of ruthless Roman Emperors. They refused to bow the knee to the Roman pantheon or to worship as part of the Cult of Caesar. Unfortunately, the film fails to acknowledge this aspect of Christian faith and history. In fact, the true Gospel, though often obscured under the thick veils of religious tradition and oppressive hierarchy, would be the perfect innoculation against the disease of fear, the very disease that the film rightly identifies as the elite’s greatest weapon against the common person. And that, I must note, is the sad and sorry irony that sinks the ship of what could’ve been a powerful and informative odyssey into the truth. “We are being lied to,” Zeitgeist ominously intones. Indeed, we are.

No longer crackling
with danger,
but dancing to music
only you can hear,
you only can share.

Driving your feet down
deep in drifts blown
whirling into valleys.
Your feet will find
these frosted rivers
running swiftly to the sea,
unbroken in the breach.

Snowflakes whip
past my ears,
singing songs with
glass-pitched choruses
(like singing saws with
cobra hips),
rushing in with
stinging kisses.  I
see through the
igloo glass, your
mittens on the
bedside table.  You
lose your grip on
loquats, they fall
into the snow.

- Igloo Glass
   by Holopaw

This is one of those songs that I can listen to sixty-eight times in a row and then come back for more.  The amount of alliteration laced into the words, the sssssss that weaves its way through every phrase, this isn’t just posturing.  The reader (and even more, the listener) can feel the driving snow flakes whirling and tumbling into their face.  The imagery is quirky, off-kilter, and yet completely logical.  Why wouldn’t you say that a snowflake’s song has a “glass-pitched” chorus?  After all, examine a snowflake through a microscope and its texture is definitely sharp, smooth, clean, glassy.  Why wouldn’t “like singing saws” be a perfect simile for a snowflake, given their roughly circular shape and keen edges?  “With cobra hips” strikes me as the most playful of all the images.  Why not characterize the edges of a snowflake as hips, hips that bite and sting, hips with a sensual shape and sway?

The images and the pure alliterative sound, coupled with the rapid-fire phrasing and laid-back drawl of the delivery, lend the whole verse a whimsical quality, like snow being gently blown along on the wind, twirling and dancing toward the earth.

1992 – 2007

Pittsburgh, désolé,
but your hills must come crashing
down upon your head.

Edit: May all my foolish words turn to dust.

Robert has an amazing set-up of gear for recording, including two microphones that look like James Bond spy pistols or some such.  They’re set to pick up some ungodly level of frequency response.

We recorded the following songs (some with multiple takes):

Yellowback
We’ll Waltz
Shipping and Receiving
Here Comes the Fever
The Only Island in the Sea
You’re Not Safe but You’re Good

He also brought his Alvarez 12-string and I recorded a few of the takes with it.  This was an incredible experience.  A warm thanks to Robert for volunteering his time, expertise, and equipment, as well as for reserving the room.  The songs should be mixed and mastered sometime soon.  I’ll let you folks hear them on myspace as soon as I’m able.  Much love to all . . .