Jesus myth theories

Glenglen, you disagree when it comes to questioning the Gnostic way. Jesus was a.... racist?

 

The Scapegoat and the Sacrificial Lamb
The scapegoat and the sacrificial lamb had long been staples of Jewish religious tradition when Jesus was allegedly crucified. Webster defines scapegoat as: “a goat upon whose head are symbolically placed the sins of the people after which he is sent into the wilderness in the biblical ceremony for Yom Kippur.” The goat was referred to as Azazel, the name of a demon. Some neighboring Near Eastern societies had a similar tradition of sending a goat representing evils (instead of sins) into the wilderness. But there’s no evidence who borrowed from whom, if at all. The Paschal lamb relates to the eve of Passover, commemorating the lamb’s blood smeared on the doors of Jewish homes to protect the first born of Israel. The tradition is still celebrated by Samaritans, and was familiar to Jesus and his disciples. Lambs were common sacrificial animals in ancient cultures. However, it was the Jewish scapegoat and the Paschal lamb that were familiar to the people who developed Christianity. And the idea of a divine victim becoming both scapegoat and Paschal lamb was a distinctively Christian contribution, usually attributed to Paul.

[FONT=&quot]At this point, I'd just like to revisit Pinker's quotation (supra): “the story of Jesus was by no means unique. A number of pagan myths told of a savior who was sired by a god, born of a virgin at the winter solstice, surrounded by twelve zodiacal disciples, sacrificed as a scapegoat at the spring equinox, sent into the underworld, resurrected amid much rejoicing, and symbolically eaten by his followers to gain salvation and immortality.” I hope I've provided enough to establish that the case isn't nearly as clearcut as his generalization would lead people to believe.[/FONT]

 

I know. This happens during the regeneration. It's pretty clear if you believe in an anthropomorphic god hierarchy. It is clear the other way if you understand that these are symbols that teach a universal curriculum coming in many forms and we in fact can predict future astronomical events. We don't have any evidence for any god princes judging the deeds of men by sectors, or any evidence of religious prophecy coming true other than the claim that such and such was done in order to fulfill prophecy. The way these men judge is not to judge actions or characters but to discern reality in sane proportions. The twelve thrones at the table are in fact the solar zodiac. Twelve thrones surrounding the center. No one at the feet, no one to the right or left. These are called in esoteric tradition the great rays. Life giving spirit. It is not flesh and blood with which we deal but principality and power. Twelve tribes to four mothers, earth, air, water, and fire.

 

In the Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus refers to Seth and reports that his descendants invented the wisdom of the heavenly bodies, and built the "pillars of the sons of Seth", two pillars inscribed with many scientific discoveries and inventions, notably in astronomy. The two pillars are one of brick and one of stone. A way of recording information so that if one falls away in time the other will remain. The brick is the cultural anthropological story and the stone is the transcendent metaphysical description. By metaphysical I mean of the essential nature of reality. So timeless wisdom preserved as myth. The bible is such a two pillared construction.

 

Thanks for your efforts. Now I have something to go on.

Note the word "may", indicating that Prof. Redford "may" be giving his opinion and that the matter is uncertain. Note that the statement is also about art, not beliefs or the existence of the figures concerned. For lack of better knowledge, I'd be willing to accept the possibility that Christian depictions of Jesus and Mary were eventually influenced by depictions of Horus and Isis. However, if we're using that as evidence that Jesus himself was based on Horus, I'd counter that belief in Jesus was well-established before there is any evidence of possible influence from Isis-Horus worshippers on how he and his mother were depicted. Christian depictions of Jesus and Mary were not a part of Christianity during the first four centuries, at least by the Jerusalem church and the churches founded by Paul. Christianity grew out of Judaism which prohibited "graven images", and Saint Irenaeus denounced any such depictions as Gnostic and "heathenish". The Synod of Elvira banned them in 306 C.E. I must say that Redford's association of Horus and Saint George seems farfetched, and remember we're talking about Horus as a model for Jesus, not Saint George. Saint George was a figure of the third-fourth century C.E., but the legend of him slaying the dragon was brought back by the Crusaders from the Middle East in the Middle Ages. Who knows where they got it?

Budge's discussion of the Horus myth resembles Massey's, and is of the same vintage (1911). It reflects the standards of an earlier era of scholarship when scholars were less meticulous in separating fact from opinion. The problem with the Osiris myth as a prototype for Jesus is that Osiris never bodily returned to earth after Isis patched him up. I must say, I don't trust Budge's judgment, because he was heavily into spiritualism and the occult.

Hornung is well- respected as an Egyptologist. His points are quite similar to Redford's. Hmmm. There may be more borrowing going on here than meets the eye. Interesting variation on the Saint George theory. Here, Hornung mentions the model of Horus' triumph over Seth. Was Seth ever depicted as a serpent or depicted as one? Horung understandably has Egyptian models in mind, but early Christians would probably be more familiar with the OT account of the slaying of Leviathan by Yahweh, which may have been influenced by the Canaanite myth of Baal slaying the serpent or Marduk slaying Tiamat. But that's a myth of a different color. I covered both the Mary-Isis connection and Saint George above under Redford so I won't repeat it here. My argument still stands.

Mettinger explicitly says the opposite in a passage I thought I'd quoted: "There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct." (Mettinger, Riddle of the Resurrection, 221.)

Exactly! That's a major reason why "Jesus myth" theories went out of style among a majority of scholars. Professor Mark S. Smith, scholar of andcient Near east and Hebrew Bible studies, was able to show through painstaking research that many details of the pagan myths Christians were said to have copied were unknown in pagan mythology until after Christianity became a well-established relgion. See Mark S. Smith, "The Death of 'Dying and Rising God' in the Biblical World", Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 12 (1998)257-313. While it might seem logical to the casual observer that if belief in Horus, Attis, Mithras, etc., preceded Christianity, all the features of those religions also preceded Christianity. But those myth systems were quite adaptable in dealing with the Christian competition in the Roman world.

 

Sorry about that. I didn't realize you felt compelled to respond to all my posts, but I do appreciate it. Smith is not a Christian apologist in the usual sense. He's a respected scholar, although I think he is a Christian. I don't think the article you describe is the right one. It's in the Scandanavian Journal of the Old Testament, 12(1998) and it used to be on the internet but I notice the site says it's no longer available. I obtained it through inter-library loan.

 

Orgasms aren't necessary. It's my belief and if you read Genesis closely you'll notice that eating the fruit of knowledge is indulging in orgasm. Sexual energy is represented by the serpent and can either be positive or negative. The positive would be the bronze serpent risen on the pole (spinal column). This is a symbol for the new creation "Christ" within when someone abstains from orgasm and transforms that energy into spiritual life. I'm not orthodox either if you've noticed.

 

No offense intended, but your analysis seems kinda "out there" to me--although the Puritans and Freud might agree with you. Interpreting symbols and allegories is highly subjective and subject to more than one meaning. I found it can be life-changing, if the interpretation leads to positive, life-affirming thoughts and actions. We've had considerable experience with the negative, sin-obsessed, sexually repressive interpretations and they yield "bitter fruit", which Jesus said was a sure sign of "false Prophets".

 

No offense taken. Even Jesus was called out of his mind. It's the only interpretation that actually explains both the tree of knowledge and the bronze serpent. Most Christians believe that it was just an anonymous tree and the bronze serpent was an actual piece of metal on a stick. None of these have any power in real life.

 

Or simply letting taste or appearance be your guide. In practical life it would be called sensationalism.

 

It’s difficult to find hard evidence that some figures in history who are often taken for granted actually existed. For example, did Socrates exist? Did the Buddha exist? These are two of my heroes, but the evidence for their existence could be challenged. We know of Socrates mainly from Plato, who is also our principal ancient source for the Lost Continent of Atlantis--not something that would inspire a skeptic's confidence. Maybe he Just made up Socrates as a vehicle for giving his own ideas more weight. Some skeptics have even called Plato’s existence into question, since only seven copies of his manuscripts have survived, and they date several hundred years after the originals were supposedly written. Plato certainly existed, since he was Aristotle’s teacher and one of the most important figures in Greek philosophy. Socrates is more iffy, since he wrote nothing we know of himself (and why was that? Fishy, fishy) But his existence was corroborated by Xenophon, his alleged student and war buddy; and by Aeschines, who featured Socrates as a character in his dialogues, just like Plato. And by the playwrite Aristophanes, who provided a biting satire of the sage that contrasts dramatically with the picture we get from the others. So I’m willing to go out on a limb and say I think Socrates was real, although I could be wrong.

But what about Pythagoras? We know him best for the mathematical theorem by his name that he probably didn’t formulate. Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosopy, credits Pythoagoras with having such a profound influence on Plato and other greek thinkers that Pythagoras should be considered the most influential of philosophers. And yet Simon Critchley, in The Book of Dead Philosophers says Pythagoras didn’t exist—that he was probably invented by a small group of people in Southern Italy as a model of their ideals of what a great thinker should be. If Pythagoras wrote anything, none of his writings survive. Yet other scholars question the absence of footnotes in Critchley’s book, and the well-regarded Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy still accepts him as real.We also have the writings of Heraclitus, a contemporary of Pythagoras, who assures us that Pythagoras was an expert on religious ritual and founder of a way of life. So Pythagoras gets my vote, too, as does the Buddha, even though the evidence for him is remarkably sketchy. There are no written records of the Buddha for several centuries after he was supposed to have lived (5th to 4th centuries B.C.E.), and the oldest surviving manuscripts to mention him, the Gandharan texts, were written at least two centuries later. Asvaghosa’s biography of the Buddha, the earliest we have, dates from the second century. The traditional biographies of the Buddha contain conflicting information, and are replete with lots of miracles and supernatural events, lessening their credibility for secular historians. Why do I believe he was real? Because parsimony and plausibility make it easier for me to believe that he was than to accept alternative explanations for which there is no evidence at all.

I know what some of you are thinking: What difference does it make? For those who believe Jesus is the key to their salvation, it would make a great deal of difference whether He existed or not. But the other thinkers I've been discussing are just that, thinkers whose message is more important than their existence. I agree. But in assessing the Jesus myth theory, the question is whether or not it's reasonable to believe in His existence, quite apart from the supernatural status claimed for Him. And for that purpose, it seems inappropriate to use a double standard.

 

No. We have relatively little evidence that these others existed, but enough to convince many people, most scholars, and me that it's more likely than not that they did. Same goes for Jesus. And we should apply the same standards to both.

So far, I’ve challenged the mythicist claim that Jesus was made up out of whole cloth from the remnants of pagan religions. I’ve argued that these alleged parallels are overdrawn. Although I think there’s good reason to suspect that some of the pagan myths influenced retellings of the Jesus story over the first few centuries of Christianity, and that Old Testament sources also were a source of tales embellishing the Jesus story, I think there’s sufficient evidence to support a reasonable belief that Jesus was a real man who said and did at least some of the things attributed to Him. This by the way is hardly a shocking thesis, since it’s the view held by a great majority of scholars in Jesus studies today. What I’m not arguing is that there’s proof. Proof involves persuading others that a position is correct, so that no reasonable person could believe otherwise. What I’m doing instead is explaining why I believe that Jesus was a real historical person.

The standard of evidence that I’m using is the substantial evidence test—a test used in administrative decision making to determine what level of risk we’re exposed to from government actions: safety standards for exposure to toxic substances, traffic fatalities, construction of bridges, etc. Substantial evidence is enough to convince a reasonable person to make the decision, even though other reasonable people are convinced of a different or even the opposite position. I’ll be arguing that the evidence for a historical Jesus is substantial in that respect, and that it’s not contrary to science and sound scholarship. Keep in mind that I won’t be arguing for a supernatural Jesus, although I won’t rule that out. I leave the Jesus of the creeds, who was born of a virgin, risen from the dead, one with God in the Trinity, etc., to faith. I'm mainly concerned with establishing that a belief in an historical Jesus who walked, talked and was crucified on this planet is reasonable, based on substantial evidence and not contrary to science and the available scholarly evidence.

I think there was a real historical Jesus for several reasons, which I’ll list and briefly explain here and then develop in subsequent posts. Jesus wasn’t borrowed from myths of pagan gods because:
(1) Many of the earliest Christians didn’t think Jesus was a god, at least during his lifetime.
(2) The notion of a crucified god went counter to Jewish beliefs about the Messiah, and therefore would not be made up.
(3) The notion of a Jewish Messiah who was baptized by John the Baptist was inconsistent with the notions that (a) Jesus was superior to John and (b) Jesus was born without sin; the fact that this is reported in the gospels and strenuously explained away suggests that it was real.
(4) Paul refers to his meetings with Peter and James the Just, the brother of Jesus. Both men were thought to have been close to Jesus, and affirmed his existence first hand;
(5) Josephus confirms the role of James the Just as brother of Jesus.
(6) The existence of Jesus is corroborated in a sizeable number of independent first century sources, including Paul’s letters, the canonical gospels, the Q-gospel, the L and M sources, the Gospel of Thomas, and the non-Pauline epistles.
(7) Most scholars in the field, those with doctorates and publications in peer reviewed journals in their disciplines, are convinced that Jesus was real.
(8) Many of the details of Jesus’ life presented in the earliest writings and traditions are plausible, mundane, and utterly unlike the life stories of pagan gods.
(9) Any literary or mythical models for Jesus more likely came from Jewish, not pagan, sources.
(10) Parsimony and plausibility make it easier for me to believe that he was real than to accept alternative explanations for which there is little credible evidence. The alleged parallels to Jesus in pagan sources don’t hold up under close scrutiny, and the mythicists have shown no evidence that they were in fact the models for the Jewish followers of Jesus.

These reasons don’t make the case airtight, but I submit they make a prima facie case that belief in an historical Jesus is not unreasonable in light of the available evidence.

 

I think Jesus existed because of the impact he had on our society.

For a start, the worldwide standard for keeping time is based from when Christ was born.

Secondly, Christianity, in an albeit lesser form, has survived over 2000 years.

You don't need to question whether a stone fell in a pond when you can see the ripples that it created 2000 years later.

Was Buddha just a mystical figure? People seem to spend a whole lot more time debating the existence of Christ opposed to the existence of Buddha. I think they both existed.

Was Jesus a prophet? now that is a better question.

 

Many of the earliest Christians didn’t think Jesus was a god during his lifetime. Christianity was born in Palestine among monotheistic Jews who were looking for the Messiah. Jesus’s earliest followers thought He was there man. But the Messiah of Jewish prophecy wasn’t expected to be a divine figure, and such a view would have been considered blasphemous by most Jews. The title Son of God was given by the Jews to mortals: to particularly pious Jews (Jub. 1:24), a king of Israel, like Solomon (2 Sam. 7:11-14; Ch.22:10); or the future Messiah (1QS,2:11-12) (Dead Sea Scrolls). In any case, this was an honorary title, meaning that the person so designated was particularly close to God. It was not understood to mean that the designee was literally divine in the pagan sense.


After Jesus’ death, some Christians believed that God “exalted” Jesus and made Him his adopted Son (but not God) at His resurrection. Ehrman considers this to be the earliest view of Christians on the subject, as reflected in Romans 1:3-4, and thinks it is pre-Pauline, since Paul appears to be quoting it instead of stating it as his own idea (Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist, p. 232). By the time of the first Gospel (65-70 C.E) some Christians came to see the adoption of Jesus as coming earlier, in God’s voice from the clouds. The early Jerusalem sect called Ebionites retained this view until the 4th century. Jesus is not called God in Q, Mark,or Luke. Bart Ehrman develops these ideas at length in his recent book How Jesus Became God. It’s a controversial thesis and already traditional Christian scholars have tried to counter it. (Bird et al., How God Became Jesus) But Ehrman makes a convincing case, and I’m sticking with him. If this view is correct, it seems unlikely that the model of pagan gods would be involved in the earliest views of Jesus at all.

 

You must be amazing what it is as for your knowledge for a clown. But your knowledge for Nothing is lacking indeed.

 

Are you just expanding on what I previously said?

[quote: okiefreak]"But his existence was corroborated by Xenophon, his alleged student and war buddy; and by Aeschines, who featured Socrates as a character in his dialogues, just like Plato. And by the playrite Aristophanes, who provided a biting satire of the sage that contrasts dramatically with the picture we get from the others. So I’m willing to go out on a limb and say I think Socrates was real, although I could be wrong." [/quote]

[quote: okiefreak]: " Plato certainly existed, since he was Aristotle’s teacher and one of the most important figures in Greek philosophy."

So I guess we agree? Thanks for the added detail.