Metacrock

Meta => The thing about Jesus birth day being the same as Mithra's (I would check the sources on that. I've not been able to find any creible mythological sources that state that Mithra was born on dec 25. That comes form a Jesus myther book as far as I know, and I don't know what the original sources say).

the argument itself is a classic case of the informal fallacy post hoc, ergo proctor hoc which means "after the fact, therefore, before the fact." That is a fallcy.

The Bible never says when Jesus was born. So the orignial Jesus story could not have been influened by any of the birth days of dying rising savior gods, becasue wasn't part of the original karygma.

the myther is stuck with arguing litterally, after the fact, therefore, before the fact, or that the conincidence somehow proves some kind of influence, even though it came latter.

Soul Invictus

I thought the Council had at least some sort of discussion about what were acceptable/approved texts to be disseminated to the people in the form of a Bible..(maybe not in the contemporary sense of what we think of as Bible) Could you clarify this for me.

Tercel

If by "Council" you mean the Council of Nicea in 325AD under Constantine, then the answer is no. The idea that this council decided things relevant to the Bible is a common myth. It didn't. It didn't rule on acceptable texts, it didn't rule on approved texts, it didn't rule on Bible books... in short: it had nothing to do with the Bible whatsoever.

Whether in a "contemporary" or "uncontemporary" sense it still had nothing to do with the Bible.

Roger appears to have done a significant amount of work tracing the origins of the myth, which he linked to earlier in this thread:
http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/nicaea.html

I am quite amused to see Voltaire and Thomas Paine on his list of those responsible for the myth...


PS Roger, I am almost suprised upon reflection not to see any reference to Edward Gibbon as being one of those responsible, since he has turned out to be the one responsible in several similiar situations I have investigated. Have you checked him out on the subject?

Roger Pearse

I'm surprised, I must say, but since I haven't got Metzger here, I can't look it up.

Thank you for this, which was interesting but far too short. I knew that 1 Enoch came to us from an Ethiopic version. This 'mess' as you accurately call it suggests to me that we are missing some important element in the situation.

But a useful link -- thank you.

I agree. My query was the authority he enjoyed outside his see. But were not the festal letters written to other churches in his area, rather than generally?

Incidentally, there is a collection of these letters extant in Syriac, with an English translation, and if they aren't online I'm going to scan them. I've ordered it anyway because the introduction explains the discovery of the mass of Syriac manuscripts in the Nitrian desert in 1842, and how they got to the British Museum, and I want to know about that.

Ug. I'd have to look and I'm all out of time at the moment. Have a look at http://www.tertullian.org/articles/b...gelasianum.htm and see how that deals with it.

Please pardon my irregular comments, but I have only access to the net for short periods at the moment.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

In fairness, Paine was writing a confession of faith in the religion of the French Revolution, in prison, with the guillotine hanging over his head, so factual accuracy may not have been uppermost in his mind at the time.

I don't know a lot about Voltaire, but I read in an essay by Augustine Birrell that he 'was not a truthful man and once swore to lies in an affidavit.' Again, in fairness, his anti-clericism seems a natural view to take in the context of the corrupt statist-catholic church of the Ancien Regime, and hatred of the clergy was a first imperative of the revolution.

No, I must say I haven't. I'd sort of presumed he would know better anyway. The errors in Gibbon that I have seen are caused by 'spin' rather than ignorance. However, my purpose was really to locate the facts about Nicaea. The stuff about Paine and Voltaire I came across anyway while looking for the facts so thought I'd include it. I suppose I ought to check Gibbon.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

TGE

And I'm more than happy to be corrected and pointed in the direction of material that will help give me a better understanding on the subject.

The information i have regarding the birthdate of Mithra, does not come from (at least directly) any Myther arguement against Christianity but a paper on the history of Iranian religion, which claimed the Birthday of Mithra was celebrated on Yalda (21st of December) -- but had a footnote to the effect that this was changed when it hit Rome to allow for a problem caused by the leap year (I can't remember what year this was in)

I found it very interesting that the Birth, Death and resurrection days of Christ were super-imposed over those of a deity who represented similar virtues and played the same role of savior of man kind.

Thanks for replying.