The Copycat Theory of Christianity: Jesus and Pagan Parallels

Discussion in 'Agnosticism and Atheism' started by Tishomingo, Feb 16, 2021.

  1. Tishomingo

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    • Osiris was Egyptian god of the afterlife, as well as agricultural fertility, and an incarnation of deceased Egyptian pharaohs. According to the myth, he was murdered by his brother Seth, chopped into fourteen pieces, and scattered all over Egypt. His wife and sister Isis managed to find them, except for his male member, reassemble them, and magically resuscitate him. (She even uses a golden dildo to have sex with him and conceive their son Horus by him--not exactly a virgin birth but certainly miraculous)! But Osiris does not return to the land of the living. He goes to the land of the dead to become its ruler, with his legs wrapped as a mummy. Scholars debate whether or not this counts as resurrection.

    • Baal Hadad. Baal Hadad was the Canaanite/Ugaritic storm/rain god. He is of interest because he was the principal rival to the Hebrew god Yaweh, and was the son of El (Yaweh in another iteration). Baal was the god you turned to for rain, and he would be the one to calm storms, so when Jesus calmed the storm He was encroaching on Baal's territory, but there's no specific instance of an incident like Jesus calming the storm for the apostles.
    Baal was sibling rival to his brother Mot (death), who invited him to the underworld for dinner but didn't tell Baal he would be the main course. With Baal dead, the earth experienced major drought. Mot's behavior pissed off Baal's sister, Anat, a wonder woman type who descended to the underworld and in a scene rated XXX for violence, split Mot in two with her sword, chopped him into little pieces, shook them, burned them, crushed them, and threw them to the birds. (Remarkably, he recovered from this). Baal re-emerged and returned to the surface, which began to bloom again.
     
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  2. Tishomingo

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      • Tammuz. Tammuz is the Akkadian name for Dumuzi or Dumuzid, the Sumerian patron god of herdsmen and orchards, who married Inanna (aka, Ishtar, Astarte, Astoreth), the goddess of fertility, sex, and war. Inanna descended into the underworld, the realm of her sister Ershkigal, with the intent of taking it over. Instead, Eskigal kills her and hung her carcass on a meat hook until it turned green. Meanwhile, things on the surface were deteriorating, without fertility and sex, so the water god, Enki, sends emissaries with the food and water of life to revive her, which they do. Atheist historian Richard Carrier considers her death to be crucifixion, which I'd dispute, but her restoration to life certainly sounds like resurrection--at least for Inanna! But the demons tell Inanna she can't return to the surface unless she finds a substitute. When Inanna learns that Dumuzi been enjoying himself in the company of dancing girls, she decides he would be the perfect candidate, so off he goes to the netherworld. But after a while, she gets to missing him and makes a deal with his sister, to have her (the sister-in-law) spend half the year in the underground and Dumuzi spend the other half--symbolizing the change in seasons. In the Bible, Ezekiel (8: 14-17) expresses dismay at "women...weeping for Tammuz). That's what that was about. The fact that Tammuz can only leave the underworld when his sister takes his place limits his relevance as a model for Jesus.
      • A Greek variant was the myth of Persephone, daughter of Mother Earth (Demeter) who is carried off to the underworld by Hades. Her despondent mother ceases fertility until a deal can be arranged to have her daughter half the year with her mother and the other half with Hades. This became the basis of the Greek Eleusinian mysteries, oldest of the Greco-Roman mystery religions.
    ...
     
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  3. Tishomingo

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    • Attis: Attis was a shepherd who got involved with a jealous goddess--Cybele and Aphrodite, respectivley. Enraged at his infidelity, Cybele drove Attis mad and he castrated himself, bleeding to death. Remorseful, Cybele preserved his body, caused his hair to continue to grow and enabled him to move his little finger. In another version, she turned him into a fir tree. Like Tammuz, his death was commemorated by much mourning by women. The male devotees were expected to castrate themselves, often in frenzy during worship services. But the focus was mainly on the Great Mother Cybele. An important ritual that developed in 160 A.D. was the tauroboleum--a bloody baptism in bull's blood. Whether inspired by Christianity or made up on its own is unknown.
    • Adonis.The Adonis story from Hellenistic Syria combines elements of Tammuz and Attis. Far from having a virgin birth, he is conceived in incest, and his mother has him after being turned into a tree. Not one but two goddesses vie over his custody as a baby, and Zeus settles the contest by having Adonis spend part of the year with Aphrodite, part with Persephone, and a few months leave on his own. He is the god of male beauty and desire. He was gored by a boar (actually the god Aires, jealous for Aphrodite) and died in the arms of Aphrodite. His blood mingling with her tears became the blood red anemone flower.By the third century AD, the legend circulated that his head came back every year for the turn of the seasons. Kike Attis, not much of a resurrection.
     
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  4. Tishomingo

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    • Dionysus (Bacchus): A god widely worshiped in the Mediterranean towns Paul visited, Dionysus was the god of fertility, grapes, and wine, and also the theater. The uninhibited hedonism of the cult makes it an unlikely analog for early Christianity, but it does include rebirth among the deity's attributes. That would have been at the time of his traumatic birth, of which there are conflicting versions. Some say his birth mother was the goddess Persephone; others her mother Demeter; and still others, a mortal woman Semele, whom Zeus raped. In any event, Zeus's jealous wife, hating the child, sicks Titans on him, who tear him to pieces, cook him, and eat him--except for pieces of his heart. Athena or some other goddess salvaged these and took them to Zeus, who mixed them in a potion and fed them to Semele, who conceives the child once again (virgin birth and resurrection at the same time? Possibly, but a stretch). Anyhow, Zeus rescues the fetal Dionysus by sewing him into his thigh and giving birth to him that way. Let's just put that in the miraculous birth category. Anyhow, these incidents gave Dionysus the nickname "twice born". He was cursed by Hera with mental illness (shall we call him manic) and roams the earth driven by hedonism and a quest for adventure.
    The mystery religion that developed around him was a favorite of people who
    sought release from their inhibitions. Apparently, religious services were orgies
    in which participants believed they were possessed by the god himself, and
    featuring such rituals as pulling live animals apart and eating their raw flesh.
    When rumors of rape and other assaults on traditional values reached the Roman
    Senate, the religion was banned except for small gatherings by special
    permission, on penalty of death! So the notion that early Christians were
    "copycats" of this cult must be greeted with skepticism. Seaford comments:
    "Any similarities or mutual influence should not blind us to the profound
    difference in their ethics and organization." Dionysus (2006) , pp129-30.

    Dionysus was noted for descending into the underworld to bring his mother back
    from the dead, facing down Thanatos (death). This, please note, was not a
    general resurrection. One miracle of Jesus that does sound like
    something Dionysus might have done was turning water into wine at
    the wedding feast at Cana, Jesus' first miracle (John 2:1-11). In fact,
    Achilles Tatius reported Bacchus did perform a similar miracle ( Leu-
    cippe and Clitophon
    )
    --but Tatius didn't report it until the second cent-
    ury AD, leaving any influence on Christianity in doubt.

    • Orpheus. While on the subject of Dionysus, I might mention another god, Orpheus, the poet-musician son of Apollo and the muse Calliope, whose followers became a reform movement in the Dionysian cult. Orpheus could charm any living being with his music. He tried (unsuccessfully) to bring his girlfriend back from the underworld, and was torn to pieces by Dionysus's Maenads (crazed female worshipers) for shifting his worship from Dionysus to Apollo. (Another version says it was because he spurned women for the love of young boys.) His more ascetic, spiritual mystery cult that rivaled that of Dionysus. They had sets of writings which some ancients regarded as scripture. The Orphic cult apparently believed in reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, and by passing through a series of initiations, the soul could escape the cycle of rebirth and achieve union with the divine. Their belief that the body was a prison for the soul has been viewed as a forerunner of Gnoticism, which strikes me from a distance as plausible. It might be noted this was not an early Christian belief. Christians expected an imminent resurrection of the body.
    • Pythagoras. A reform movement in Orphism was started by the philosopher Pythagoras. Herodotus said he taught his followers how to attain immortality. He was said to have been a real person, a celibate ascetic vegetarian obsessed with numbers, who learned his doctrines from the Egyptians and Persians, and possibly the Jews. He set up monastic communities observing strict rules and teaching on reincarnation and other matters that were kept secret. Outward appearances were strikingly similar to those of the Qumran sect of Jewish Essenes who may have influenced Jesus--a pattern that has led some to infer a connection. Pythagoras was said to have been killed by an angry mob, or by suicide later after the mob killed his students.
     
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  5. Tishomingo

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    The final category of alleged models for Christian copycats is Wonder-working mortals and demigods. I put Krishna in this category for convenience, although he definitely qualifies as the incarnated Avatar of a deity, Vishnu. Most of these can be disposed of rather quickly.
    • Romulus and Heracles (Hercules) Neither Romulus nor Heracles was born of a virgin; rape, by Mars and Zeus (disguised as her husband), respectively, doesn't count. As for resurrection, according to the legend, Romulus didn't die but was reviewing his troops when a dark cloud came along and when it lifted Romulus was gone. presumably beamed up directly to the heavens while alive like Elijah. A parallel legend that was prevalent among the educated Roman elite was that he had been murdered by the Senate, which disposed of his body and concocted his “rapture” as a cover story. Hercules killed a centaur who was making advances on Herc's lover. Before dying, the Centaur gave the girlfriend what he said was a love potion but what was really poison. Hercules was given it and died. At his funeral, a cloud passed under him and carried him to heaven. If we define resurrection as coming back to life on earth, that doesn't seem to count either.
    • Zalmoxis. Zalmoxis is one of atheist historian Richard Carrier's favorite candidates. Zalmoxis, a Dacian priest, was a student of Pythagoras who convinced the Gettae and Dacians of Romania that he had risen from the dead and could make them immortal. According to Herodotus, he did this by a trick of hiding in an underground shelter for three years and then coming back. The gullible Dacians and Gettae fell for it, and became the bravest of Thracian soldiers because they were convinced they were immortal. Even if that were true, we must keep in mind these people were from Transylvanians and envtrons, so we don't know what kind of immortality they had in mind. They did regard vampires as unworthy to enter the kingdom of Zalmoxis, but they thought of themselves as"daoi" meaning "wolves", and drew their name from a legendary ancestor who appeared as a wolf.
     
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  6. Tishomingo

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    • Orion. Besides giving his name to a constellation, Orion is famous as a demigod for being a giant , a hunter, and walking on water, centuries before Jesus--the latter being a talent he inherited from his father Posidon, god of the sea. He landed on the island of Chiros, got himself drunk and raped the daughter of the local king, wh had him blinded as punishment. His sight was restored by the sun god Helios, so we have two miracles in the same myth. Any further resemblance to Jesus is purely coincidental, as may be the two miracles just discussed. When he threatened to hunt to extinction every amimal on earth, the goddess of wild animals, Artemis, killed him, either with an arrow or by a scorpion she produced for the occasion. He was elevated to the heavens as a constellation, along with the scorpion, but not resurrected on earth.
    • I might mention a controversial amulet that often comes up in discussions of Orion, Bacchus and Jesus. It made the cover of Freke and Gandy's Jesus Mysteries, and purports to show a crucified figure labeled "Orpheus Bacchus" dating from the third century CE. That, of course, would be late enough to warrant suspicion of copying of Jesus by the pagans. The original amulet was lost, and the image in Freke and Gandy is a drawing. Otto kern and Reil and Zahn have determined it to be a fake.
    • Asclepius. Asclepius was the product of another sexual union between Apollo and a human woman (which one is debatable, there were so many to keep track of !) The mother died in childbirth but Apollo cut the child from her womb to save it. He was raised first by animals, then by shepherds, and eventually either Apollo or a centaur who taught him medicine. He then traveled around the countryside curing the sick and teaching the medical arts. Unlike Jesus, his cures weren't the simple speaking of words or the laying on of hands but more involved procedures sometimes involving surgery. Healing temples (asclepeia) were set up in his name. He cured people on the brink of death, and even managed to bring somebody back from the dead, by administering blood taken from a gorgon. So effective was he in saving lives that Hades had him struck dead for ruining his business and creating a population problem on earth.
    • Apollonius of Tyana. Appolonius' birth was said to have been hearalded by an angel. He had followers who thought he was the son of God, healed the sick, raised the dead. But while we have multiple sources for the life of Jesus, we only have one source for Apollonius: Philostratus, who based his account on the reports of only one eyewitness : Damis from Nineveh, a city that no longer existed in the first century, making it unlikely that Damis existed. commissioned Philostratus was commissioned by the wife of Emperor Severus to write the biography of Apollonius over a century after Apollonius’s “death.” The Life of Apollonius was probably created to compete with the Gospel accounts of Jesus which were making their way across the Roman Empire.

     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2021
  7. Mountain Valley Wolf

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    But she said that the angel came to her and said that God would do that! The same thing happened to my wife. I wanted to have relations before our marriage but she insisted on remaining a virgin till we got married. Then the angel came to her too, because she was pure and a virgin and said that God would enter her and that's how she got pregnant before we got married even though she was a... virgin... ...Wait a minute!!!
     
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  8. Mountain Valley Wolf

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    Somewhere I might have some literature that defines virginity in the ancient Middle East on slightly different terms other than the mere act of intercourse. I will have to search through my library on that, and then again it may be my memory of what I read is incorrect, or it referred to a specific kind of virgin, such as a vestal virgin.
     
  9. Tishomingo

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    I think Mary became a virgin because Matthew and Luke misinterpreted Jewish scripture. Looking for support for Jesus' Messiahhood, they read in their Septuagint (Greek translation) Isaiah's prophecy: "behold a parthenos (virgin) shall conceive and bear a son..." Isaiah 7:14. Says so right there in plain Greek! But the original Hebrew text says almah--a young woman of marriageable age. She might be a virgin, but not necessarily. If Isaiah meant virgin, he could have said betulah (virgin) and eliminated the confusion. But no. He probably wasn't even thinking of that, sine he meant young woman of marriageable age. Most normal people would assume a virgin couldn't conceive and bear a son, so if he meant that she could, he might have said so in plain Hebrew.

    Then there was the "technicality" that this passage has nothing to do with the birth of the messiah. Isaiah is assuring King Ahaz he doesn't have to worry about an imminent attack by the kingdoms of Ephraim and Syria because that wouldn't happen during the time it would take a child not yet conceived by the young maiden in question to be born and grow to the age of being able to tell right from wrong, and by then those kingdoms would no longer exist! Paul, writing before Matthew and Luke, knew nothing about virgin birth and assured Christians "Jesus was made "according to the flesh." That's why I think atheists who seek to show that every pagan and his dog believed in virgin birth and the Christians copied it from them are barking up the wrong tree! If we see a reference to a pagan god being born of a virgin (a real betulah), that would be reason to suspect the pagans copied it from the Christians!

    When Christians say Jesus was born of a virgin, they are saying something quite precise (if erroneous): that Jesus was conceived without coitus. Particularly in the Catholic church this is a very big deal. At a time when many early Christians held up chastity as an ideal, Mary became an important symbol of that virtue. I don't think they got that from the pagans. In fact, Catholics believe Mary was perpetually a virgin, and that all of Jesus's "siblings" mentioned in the Bible were foster siblings through Joseph or cousins. Christians were not calling any miraculous birth a virgin birth, nor were they saying any birth from a union between a mortal and a god is a virgin birth. And that's what atheists seem to be saying pagans are saying and Christians should be accepting.
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2021
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  10. Tishomingo

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    • Romulus. Atheist Richard Carrier submits Romulus as a likely model for Christian copiers. Romulus, of course, was the legendary founder and first king of Rome. In chapter four of On The Jesus was born dueing Augustus'Historicity of Jesus, Carrier tells us of Plutarch’s account of the “virgin birth” of Romulus, son of a god and the legendary founder and first ruler of Rome. But there are some problems with this theory. Plutarch never says Romulus had a virign birth, and other Roman writers make clear he didn't. In particular, we learn from Livy that Romulus' mother was "forcibly violated", or as Dionysius of Halicarnassus puts it "ravished". Plutarch puts it more delicately, that she was "with child", leaving the particulars unmentioned. So was that a "virgin birth"? True, his mother was a Vestal Virgin before she was allegedly raped by Mars, but rape and virginity aren’t consistent. The devil is in the details.

      As for the alleged “resurrection” of Romulus, Carrier’s conclusion is similarly puzzling. Resurrection is generally understood to involve somebody who was dead coming back to life. The account of Romulus says he was reviewing his troops when a dark cloud and mist came along and when it lifted Romulus was gone. It was later attested that he had been taken away by the gods. Nothing about him being dead. A parallel legend that was prevalent among the educated Roman elite was that he had been murdered by the Senate, which concocted his “ascension” as a cover story. Of course, the important thing to Christians about Jesus’ death and resurrection is that He died for our sins and that his return from the dead showed his triumph over death for all who believe. The Romans didn’t believe that Romulus died, let alone for their sins, and that they would also rise like him after death. . And the Romans certainly didn’t believe that Romulus, King of Rome, was crucified like a common criminal. So for Carrier to say that Mark was “fashioning Jesus into the new Romulus” seems to be stretching it.


    • Alexander the Great. Israeli historian Ory Amitay, in From Alexander to Jesus (2010) argues that Alexander was a model for the Jesus of early Christians. Alexander's claim that he was the son of Zeus supposedly softened up Jewish monotheists to the notion of divine sonship and human divinity, and his push for reconciliation among the diverse peoples of his empire paved the way for the Christian emphasis on universalism. In particular, he notes that all the other figures who were thought to be divine sons were purely mythical, while Alexander was a flesh and blood human. But direct evidence on the linkage to Christians is lacking. The case is largely inferential.

    • Octavian. While on the subject of emperors, we might consider another who was supposedly around at the time of Jesus' birth" Octavian ("Caesar Augustus"). Jesus was born during Augustus' reign, so it is clear his story came first. According to Suetonius, Octavian's mother Atia fell asleep in the Temple of Apollo and Apollo impregnated her - making Augustus a divine son of God. He was also the adopted son and heir of Julius Caesar, and was intrumental in having Casar declared a God, making his Son of God status official. So, Caesar Augustus was called the Son of God, Lord of Lords, Prince of Peace, Savior of the world. Ain't politics wonderful! Despite the superficial resemblance, the radical differences in understaning between Christians and Romans is brought out in Crossan's book God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (2007). Crossan suspects that a number of the seeming similarities between Caesar's titles and Jesus' titles were deliberate, and the gospel writers may indeed have been fashioning Jesus into the new anti-Caesar just to annoy Rome. Still, Crossan does not claim Jesus was made up on the basis of the imperial model.
     
    Last edited: Mar 5, 2021
  11. Tishomingo

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    ASIAN MODELS. Leaving no stone unturned, the Coycat sleuths turn to the subcontinent of India. The sneaky Christians thought nobody would track them down there, but they underestimated determined Jesus mythers.
    • Krishna. Krishna seems a logical choice as Jesus model. "Krishna" sounds like "Christ"; Avatar of the god Vishnu who was part of the Hindu trinity; born of a virgin; in lowly circumstances; threatened by a paranoid king who had heard a prophecy Krishna would be a threat to him; a herdsman who kept company with herdsmen; ; died of wounds from sharp objects, and went back to their heavenly existence, after a life devoted to setting a good example for humans. What more do we need? But these are mostly superficial similarities that disappear on closer scrutiny.
    1. "Krishna" sounds like "Christ". In school we learn early on about homonyms but have different meanings. Krishna doesn't sound exactly like Christ, but something like it. The roots and meaning of the words are very different though. Krishna in Sanskrit means "object of attraction" which is pretty much what a divine avatar is. "Christ" is Greek for the annointed, referring to the Jewish "Messiah", or annointed one sent by God to save Israel.
    2. Avatar of Vishnu. An avatar in Hinduism is the material manifestation or incarnation of a deity on earth. Krishna was the incarnation of Vishnu, the Sustainer, an aspect of the ineffable Brahman, the supreme existence or underlying reality. Jesus was the incarnation of the Logos, a "person" of the divine Trinity--one God in three persons, often called "the Word" which in the neoplatonic philosophy of the Mediterannean world meant "reason" and integration. To a layman like myself, this sounds close enough. It's worth mentioning though that Jesus' status as the Logos came fairly late in the development of Christianity, the John Gospel dating post 90s AD, and the concept of the Trinity even later, with Tertulian in 210 AD. Christianity and Jesus were well-established by then, so the notion that it was simply copied from Hindus is untenable. It would also be difficult to show that either the author of the John Gospel or Tertulain were influenced by Hindu ideas, as opposed to the Greco-Roman neo-platonic ideas that were floating around in their neighborhoods.
    3. Born of a virgin. Krishna was Devaki's eighth child. How could she have been a virgin? Devotees who say that seem to mean she was a virgin when she entered her marriage with Krishna's human father, Vasudeva.
    4. Born in lowly circumstances. Jesus was born in a manger. Krishna was born in prison. Both lowly, I'll admit, but a significant difference.
    5. Threatened by paranoid kings. Herod the Great and Krishna's evil uncle, king Kamsa, were both paranoid, overreacting to prophecies that babies would be threats to their rule. Kamsa was warned by a fortune teller that any child born to Devaki would be a threat, so he had Devaki and her husband locked up, and killed one-by-one the children born to them (except Krishna, who got away). Herod went paranoid on a much larger scale, ordering the death of all male children ages two and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. But Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt with baby Jesus. Krishna's father manages to smuggle him out of prison into the hands of cowherds.
    6. Herdsman who kept company with herdsmen. Here the comparison requires some leaps of association. Jesus was never a herdsman of any kind. The Bible tells us he was a tekton, probably a carpenter and/or stone mason. However, Luke's gospel has shepherds attending His birth, and he told a parable about "the Good Shepherd" that people found so compelling that later art depicted Him as one. After his escape from prison, Krishna was raised by cowherds and was a cowherd, himself. Sheep, cows same difference, but occupationally speaking, Jesus probably found work in urban locations instead of the fields.
    7. Died of wounds received from sharp objects. Those who like to push similarities add they both died from wounds inflicted by sharp objects. Of course, Christians see a relevant difference between being crucified (Jesus), a ghastly form of execution, and being shot in the heel with an arrow in a hunting accident (Krishna) when a hunter mistook him for a deer. That's the orthodox version taught in Hindu scriptures. S. Acharya (aka Dorothy Murdock)relates another version from the "French scholar and Indianist" Jacolliot , in who has him shot multiple times by a criminal whom Krishna exposed, and who then suspends him from the branches of a tree--get it, just like crucifixion. Problem is, Jacolliot has no more credibility than Acharya. He was one of those numerous occultists and amateur Orientalists writing in the 19th century who drew extensively on the otherwise unknown (aka bogus)Sanskrit texts for his The Bible in India, or the Life of Iezeus Christna. If anyone takes it seriously, I have a diamond mine here in Oklahoma I'll consider selling you for a reasonable price.
    8. Like Jesus, he ascended into heaven, in front of witnesses. That part is part of both myths.But Jesus spent three days in a tomb first, and another forty days walking the earth--an important detail that sets Him apart from Krishna.
    9. Life devoted to setting a good example for humans. I agree. Krishna was a model for love and compassion, and as the charioteer in the Bhagavad Gita, he provides moral instruction on the paramountcy of duty, as well as a discourse on the divine nature and the variety of valid paths for serving the gods. As a youth his playful side came through, while much of Jesus' life between age 12 & 30 is a void, and the rest seems all serious and mission-driven. But His purpose was to save humanity from sin and usher in the Kingdom of God on earth--so much to do, so little time! Which highlights an important difference between Hindu and Judeo-Christian thinking about time and history. Hindus view them as cyclical. Judeo-Christians view them as linear and, in Jesus' case, eschatological.
    Nothing in the life histories of Jesus and Krishna seem sufficiently similar to justify a charge of plagiarism.
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2021
  12. Tishomingo

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    • The Buddha, Gautama Siddhartha. I think it's not unlikely that the Buddha, like Jesus, was a real historical figure, although like Jesus, he also became a subject of myths. Similarities in some of these between the two religious leaders have led to charges of copying.
    1. Virgin Birth? According to myth, the Buddha was conceived after his mother dreamed she was penetrated through her rib cage by a white elephant! But it was only a dream that she told her husband about. The Pali Canon does not say that Siddhartha was conceived without sexual activity between his parents.
    2. Precocity. Jesus was said to be preaching in the Temple at age 12 (Luke 2:45). But the Buddha outdid him; after he left the womb he immediately walked seven steps.
    3. Temptations. Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness for 40 days before beginning his ministry. The Buddah was tempted by the evil forces of the demon Mara as he sat under the bodhi tree just before he attained enlightenment. They faced the same basic temptations: cravings of the flesh, the spirit, and worldly pride, and overcame them handily. Stories of the temptation of religious leaders or gods by demons are not unique to Christianity and Buddhism. There is the attempted seduction of Horus by Set, the temptation of Zarathustra by Ahriman, and--in another hemisphere--the temptation of Quetzalcoatl by Topcatlipoca. This would suggest that something in the human psyche, maybe Jung's collective unconscious or Freud's id and superego might be at work. Of course, it is possible that Buddhist ideas made it to the Middle East by the time Christianity got started, or even that those rumors of Jesus spending his "lost years" before his ministry in India were true. I tend to favor the psychological explanation. The Buddha's rejection of the eschatological perspective with its predictions of imminent end times and the advent of God's kingdom on earth is so different from that of Jesus and the early Christians that any copying is purely speculative.
    So that does it. Any questions?
     
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  13. Tishomingo

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    Epilogue. So what, if anything, have I accomplished by this exercise, besides keeping myself out of the bars? In terms of personal benefits, it's enabled me to organize my thoughts and to satisfy myself that there really isn't any there there. I also hope that the next time somebody on HF says Christianity was just copied from the pagans, I'll be able to point them here and give them the burden of explaining how that's so jn light of the cases I've discussed. I think it also opens the way to a better understanding ofhow Christianity did come about, by eliminating explanations that aren't plausible.

    Does this mean we should take the Bible at face value and assume that its explanation of how Christianity came to be is the right one? Not at all. I mentioned before that I think there are good reasons to suppose Jesus was a real historical figure, but the Jesus legend recorded in the New Testament includes stories about Him that are obviously myth. If they didn't come from the pagans, where did they come from. I'd say mostly the Jews. When the followers of Jesus found their Messiah crucified, they faced the dilemma of admitting they had given themselves to a lie and disband, or to keep the movement going and explain how a crucified messiah claimant could be a viable object for a life commitment.

    I think they chose the latter object, and combed the Jewish scriptures (which were all they had at first) for arguments explaining how the messiah could still be viable. Various Christian writers began to put forward bible-based metaphors about Jesus, portraying Him as the Paschal Lamb and New Adam (Paul), the Suffering Servant (Mark), and New Moses (Matthew), a New Elijah (Luke), and the Logos (John). Unlike past messiahs, whom the Romans easily proved wrong by crucifying, Jesus' followers were able to make cogent arguments that Death was His Victory.
     
  14. tikoo

    tikoo Senior Member

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    Cogent arguments are annoying and unnecessary . One miracle will do ya , like walking on mud .
     
  15. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

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    A good miracle would do it, if they could pull it off or convince people it happened. Otherwise they might have to settle for the cogent arguments--or card tricks.
     
  16. tikoo

    tikoo Senior Member

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    A good miracle is one that gets witnessed . Ya , on a touring the garden of Eden I floated on mud . And I'd have thought nothing of it except
    some woman was astonished how clean me feets be . I don't think I got famous tho . Or not for that anyway .
     
  17. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

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    Profound!
     
  18. Mountain Valley Wolf

    Mountain Valley Wolf Senior Member

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    This is a very good presentation of information.

    I don't think religion copies from one or another, but rather that religions build off of a precedent.

    Jesus presents a major problem for me in this regard because of the significance of his crucifixion and resurrection. Basically if we equate the Father, Son and Holy Ghost as one and the same, then in the crucifixion he sacrificed himself to himself and then resurrected himself by himself. In other words, he completely eliminated the need for a goddess. I know of no other god in the Middle East that did that, though I am aware of Indo-Eruopean cases, probably the oldest being in the Rig Veda. The other thing is the connection to the star. He came to earth through the star (star of David), and left through the star (the crucifix or stauros in Ancient Greek, crucifixion--anastauroo, star--aster). This needs more etymological research because you also have the term stake and to pierce as stauro.

    But it is fascinating and suggests an Indo-European origin to the story, which could be Hittite or Aryan or Greek, or other sources. I say this because when you consider that the cross is the Christian version of the Axis Mundi/Tree of Life/World Tree that it makes more sense to connect it to the star from more northern latitudes where the Pole Star was more significant. In fact you find many examples of the axis mundi connected to the pole star, including even the staffs of Goddesses connected to the star which had a star at the top. Coincidentally, Odin even pierced himself on the tree of Life with his head submerged in the lake (I forget the lake) died and came back to life of himself. At least, as I understand the story. In the more lower latitudes of the Middle East, there are examples of the star connected to the Axis Mundi/World Tree/World Mountain, i.e. the portal to the other side. The three pyramids at Giza, are aligned to the stars in Orion's Belt. You find the same astral connections in Mexico where in Mayan cosmology the World tree is connected to the milky way, but its base is the 3 stars of Orion's Belt which are symbolized by a turtle at the base of the World Tree, rising up to form a cross (coincidentally) representing the feathered serpent of Quetzalcoatl. (Actually it was their use of the cross that suggested to Cortez that Christianity left a mark on this land, and is partly why I suspect Joseph Smith later claimed that Jesus had come to the Americas and was Quetzalcoatl. But as a single significant star, that seems to me to be more significant further north where the universe literally moved in a spiral around the pole star.

    That was a time well after the Greek Gods had come to power and taken control from the domain of the Goddess, and of course the Rig Veda as well had this example I referred to earlier. Judaism as well had freed itself from its earlier connection to Astarte/Astoreth/Aster/Asherah and other Goddesses. (I have an interesting report somewhere from a dig where yahweh was the consort of Astarte or one of the Goddesses of that complex). But I have yet to find any precedent in the Middle East, even at that time, of the God sacrificing himself to himself and resurrecting himself of himself. The significance of this is that it takes power from the Goddess. It is a perfect way of validating male dominance.

    But as a tool of political control and conquest of new land, a surrogate Goddess was needed to help convert goddess believing people into this new religion that enabled centralized power and control, beginning with the Holy Roman Empire. Mother Mary (Mother of God in the prayer of the rosary) was the perfect surrogate Goddess.

    Like you I believe that Jesus was a holy man. In fact, I would argue that he probably did many or all of the miracles that are claimed of him during his life. I follow indigenous spirituality and I have seen so many things that defy reason. You might say, well, such things happened under hypnosis or mass hypnosis, or a group delusion, but the problem is that reality outside of ceremony was altered based on these things. People were healed or situations were changed, or people got jobs or whatever. The magic happened. I am also now thoroughly convinced that the soul continues after death. My experiences there go back to a point where I had given up on 'finding proof' which was very important to me, and I had become very agnostic, until some amazing things happened in the Philippines around the death of my wife's ex-husband. My wife's ancestors were healers in the old traditions---in fact I can tell you that they were psychopomps (those whose job was to accompany, guide, or lead, the dead to the other side). While those ways were largely destroyed by the Spanish, it still plays a role in the life of my wife and stepkids and even my son. You cannot easily spend years living with my wife and say, 'no, death is final.' There are just too many weird things that happen around her and my kids.

    But I do think that the story around the birth and death of Jesus is based on some earlier precedent.

    Also, Tishomingo, maybe you might know---supposedly Plato had suggested a couple of hundred years before Jesus that the world needs a son of man hung from the world tree. It seems that I had read this somewhere in his writings, I have certainly heard mention of this a few times, but I do not recall where he wrote that.
     
  19. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

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    Thanks. I'm glad somebody is reading it. Since I think Jesus was a real man who was really crucified (Christian forum, Do you think Jesus Really Ever Existed? Post #548), I think the cross was an instrument of execution widely used by the Romans for more mundane purposes than the "axis mundi". It was not commonly used as a symbol by Christians during the first century after His death, because it was considered embarrassing for Jesus to have died that way. The fish was the preferred symbol. Faced with the reality that their vaunted Messiah was executed like a common criminal, and seemed to be an utter failure as a Jewish Messiah, the Christians decided to make lemonade out of the lemons and portray crucifixion as something positive.They did this brilliantly. Paul came up with the analogy to the Paschal Lamb, and Mark reinterpreted Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, and Psalm 69 as having to do with a suffering Messiah. And they convinced their followers that Jesus rose from the dead! Actually, rising from the dead was something some Jewish sects were increasingly expecting as part of the apocalyptic eschatology of the era. Unlike all the poor messianic slobs whom the Romans had discredited by executing them, Jesus made a comeback! In other words, where we differ is that I think the man and events came first and the myth was filled in to flesh out the details. As for Indo-European origins, my hunch is the Persians had a lot to do with it. Persia ran Judea and Galilee for nearly two centuries as a subdivision of the fifth satrapy called Yehud Medinata. During and after that period, Judaism became a lot more Zoroastrian than it had been before, with angels,devils, afterlife, resurrection, hell and messiahs--starting with the firs man the Bible calls Messiah, Cyrus the Great, Yaweh's annointed one (Isaiah 45). Of the Jewish sects, the one that seems to have been most influenced were the Essenes in Jesus' backyard, followed by the Pharisees. This is all very circumstantial, but I think there may be a there there.
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2021
    Mountain Valley Wolf likes this.
  20. abwzyadalmtyry

    abwzyadalmtyry Newbie

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    The copycat theory of Christianity has been floating around for a while, but there's no smoke without fire, right? So, let's dive in and get to the bottom of things. I think breaking it down deity by deity is a solid plan. It'll be interesting to see what we come up with.
     

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