Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth

http://www.pocm.info

 

Really? I tried your web address, and got a Christian site complete with references to Christian counseling and a variety of other Christian topics. So is this a hoax?

 

Sorry, .info not .com
Pretty ironic though
Try again.

 

Most of the "similarities" disappear when you find out that Jesus was born about the first of Oct. not in Dec. That Christmas is not found in the Bible and that the only celebration that Christian are actually asked to celebrate is the Memorial of Christ death. That Jesus is not the Sun god but the Son of God.

Also if you actually look at what the myths actually say, they generally are not any where near what the the people who believe this stuff, say they are.

 

And what lack of consideration would that be?

 

Religion adapts sometimes when it spreads or develops, so what? It's not like the exact date of when to celebrate Jesus' birth or death is the focus point. You can place big question marks at all influences of 'pagan', other or former religions and cults in every religion but although the sources are shady it all comes down to the faith believers have in their own life. Of course nonbelievers love to keep on tearing these faiths apart, even when we're in a time and place when these religions have no impact on them. :beatdeadhorse5:

 

It has always been interesting to me that in discussions like this, very few people address the underlying premise that either there is no God or he just doesn't care what people believe and that would also include a unbelief in Satan who is misleading the entire inhabited Earth.

If there is a God and the Bible is his message to mankind, then wouldn't his adversary try to make the Bible seem like it didn't come from God, that it's just the traditions of man gathered from other sources? Wouldn't Satan try to water down the Bible's message by forming many religions that say similar things with minor changes?

 

Before the birth and recorded history of the Christ that saw Religion grow there was Faith and respect in the glory that the elements provide
> Faith always (meThinks) precedes Religion

 

I also wonder sometimes about the Role the SUN plays now.. While most religions frown on SUN worshiping.. But what good would life be on earth without the true SUN..

 

What are you getting at?

Son and Sun may be homonyms in English, but their etymologies come from vastly differnet places.

Son, from a PIE root meaning "to bear; to give birth". Sun, from the PIE root meaning "to shine; shining".

I always just need a good incentive to get drawn into these $h!T shows. Something a little more intellectual than arguing that, no, Horus did not have 12 disciples, nor was he born of a virgin, nor was he crucified, nor was he...

I think the mytheme of the dying/rising god-man functioned for the anceints very much in the same way JRR Tolkein envisioned his Lord of the Rings epic. It is a Catholic novel, he asserted, though through the pre-christian mythology of the fictional Middle Earth. The themes are there, but is is merely a precurser, or a shadow of what was to come. Jesus existed in history, whereas the others did not.

 

I've skimmed through pagan religious texts themselves and have surface knowledge of pagan religions. They don't seem to have any similarities, superficial ones at best like having a mother or something... but basically it becomes apparent there there is nothing alike in them.

Was it Horus who was 'reborn'? It seems that he was mauled by a crocodile and his mother (I think) used clay and shaped it into the parts that were damaged and brought him back to life that way. If that's what we call being reborn... I dunno guys...

Just check out the religious texts themselves at http://www.sacred-texts.com/

 

In the beginning... There was one religious doctrine.
This doctrine has been rewritten for nearly every prehistoric culture.
These cultures then passed their knowledge into the procreated ages which was then rewritten, rewritten and rewritten to suit the eras they were in.
First came the Sumerian epics. Then mesopotamian cultures adapted this system. Aka Akkadians, Babylonians etc and then the Egyptians praised the same lords named differently of course. The Greeks used the same 12 deity system as the Akkadians. The Romans followed suit. European paganism adapted it's cultural religions from many sources. Greek, Roman and Hindu. The Christians then took the same principal ideas and came up with Christianity which celebrates strictly near all European celebrations but the adventures in the bible stem from the very beginning of them all, the Sumerian epics of creation.

 

Do you worship the shining yellow ball in the sky? ..

 

I always thought the bible could have used a more exciting name. I'm sure if it was called The Adventures of Jesus it would have a lot been more popular than it is today.

 

You mean "The Book" is not exciting enough for you? To be fair, the Bible is merely a collection of books with such cool names as Sirach, Baruch, Maccabees, and the Gospel According to...

 

Seriously, what are you geting at?

 

The implication of the post is that Jesus was "nothing but" a"miracle working, walking talking godman who brings salvation", because other religions long before him taught--what? That there were gods? That some of them took human form? That they performed miracles? That some of the miracles resembled some claimed for Jesus? Case closed?

My acceptance of Jesus over Dionysis, Mithras, Attis, Osiris, and Orpheus has nothing to do with claims of divinity and miracles, and everything to do with his example and teachings. One reason Christians were controversial in the Roman Empire (besides not paying due respect to the state gods) was that they claimed that Jesus, a lowly Galiean peasant, was the son of a god and born of a virgin, when everyone knew that those were attributes of Caesar Augustus. He was the adopted son and heir of Julius Caesar and persuaded the Roman Senate to declare Julius Caesar a god. Justin Martyr recognized that many of the claims and rituals of Christianity were already characteristic of their pagan rivals, and concluded (much in the manner of a poster to this thread) that Satan must have put them there to confuse people.

What's missing in these various pagan cults and sects is the Judeo-Christian moral foundation on which Jesus and his followers built their faith. That, to my way of thinking, isn't chopped liver, and is why, among the many places of worship listed in our phone directories today, it's hard to find listings for worshippers of Dionysus, Attis, Osiris, Orpheus, or even Mithras.

 

Maybe it's because Jesus was the most recently living of all these. I wonder how it would shake things up if another such came along now?

 

none of these other figures were really living, and it would be a stretch to call some of them, like Osiris, "man gods". He was a male deity, but to my knowledge, never took human form, although he was kind of anthropromorphic in appearance. I think Jesus could more than hold his own with the best of them, because he had the advantage of the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and an ancient book. The ancients had morality, but their deities (with the exception of Mithras) weren't good examples of it. The cult of Attis and Cybelle, for example, could be described as an infertility cult centered on the ideal of transgender sexuality, compete with male eunuchs, breast amputation for the ladies, and female prostitution. Dionysis was a notorious lush. Mithras, from the Zoroastrian tradition, was at least fighting for the triumph of light over darkness, but was a bit militant about it and not much into sympathy for the meek and mild. So I don't think any of the pagan contenders would have much electoral appeal. The most successful religion since Jesus is Islam, which has no man gods.

 

You didn't mention Odin. Odin was in human form.