Yellum Notnef

You'd think that after all this time nobody would bother to bring up another "parallels" thread after watching the dozens of others that went up in flames producing next to nothing very useful.

And it's the same folks involved every time. What's that definition of insanity that psychiatrists like to hang on their office wall?

Solo

But, given that the "sun/light" mythology is widespread from the Arctic to the equator why should we go look for "heavenly light" to Alexandria ? Because it's the closest ? Where did the Inuit get the idea of a mysterious blinding light that guarantees the shaman has found the Great Spirit ? Who did they get their resurrectional motif from, I wonder? (Mircea Eliade, Shamanism, Princeton U.P., 1974 p. 58-60).

And then you might want to re-read the Allegory of the Cave and compare Plato's metaphor of the illumined sage being laughed at by the prisoners of darkness that his eyesight was spoiled by too much light with Jesus' being thought of as insane by his own family after his return. "And would they not kill anyone who tried to release them and take them up, if they could somehow lay hands on him and kill him ?", asks Socrates. "That they would", replies Glaucon.

Jiri

Darrell W. Conder

Malachi151, from whence come your sources so that you know with certainty what the Jesus of the 1st century AD was or was not? And since the Christian church had total control of the Jesus myth and enforced its version with fire and persecution from the fourth century on, how can anyone give an honest assessment of the myth? Perhaps I take a too simplistic approach, but when I start in Genesis 1:1 and work my way to Malachi (Chronicles if you are reading a Tanakh), there is no escaping the fact that the bible is a plagiaristic nightmare. There is no original thought, nor storyline there. Virtually everything of import is “borrowed” without credit. Why should the tale of Jesus Christ be any different? While Horus may not be the inspiration for Jesus, I believe his DNA is imprinted there. The evidence is overwhelming that the NT composers looted a variety of ancient myths and legends for their Frankenstein, and then destroyed the evidence of their dishonesty. But the real nail in the coffin is not a question of plagiarism, it’s the contradictions and outright lies that make the book/tale unique.

Malachi151

I find these types of attitudes completely unacceptable for anyone wishing to be taken seriously or wishing to actually understand anything themselves.

Let's be clear. I'm an atheist, I don't believe that Jesus ever existed, I don't think that Moses ever existed, I don't think that there was ever any exodus from Egypt by a mass of Jews.

There is more than enough legitimate evidence to support those views that one does not need to descend into derogatory statements about ancient writings and cultures in order to support such views.

To be quite honest I find much of value, interest, and originality in ancient Jewish thought and scritpures. There is also quite a bit of crap, but there is quite a bit of crap in all cultures, ancient and new. I see no reason to single out ancient Jewish works for special abuse, they are no worse than the works of any other ancient culture and better than some.

The problem with the Bible is not with the authors of its many works, the problem is with the modern practitioners of the religions that use it. The writers were simple people who were products of their own time and place. Their stories are no more absurd or grotesque than Greek myths or Celtic legends.

Ancient people were what they were and we should be able to simply accept them and their cultures at face value. The problem doesn't lie with them, it lies with the present day idiots that are still taking ancient nonsense seriously.

Having said that, certainly there was a pattern of borrowing in ancient Jewish scriptures, as there was in all cultures. They all borrowed from each others. No big deal and nothing to get nasty about.

However, the Jews did develop their own quite clear and unique religious practices, scriptures, and sets of beliefs. Ancient Jewish history prior to Christianity spans a period of about 1,000 years. A lot changes in that time.

There is certainly strong evidence of cultural and scriptural borrowing from other cultures in the Torah, but they took those other influences and gave them their own identity. And certainly after that time very distinctive literary and cultural motifs developed within Jewish culture.

The Jews shared an importance on the numbers 12, 7, and 3 with all of the other Mesopotamian cultures, undoubtedly from some common origin and from continued interaction.

But when someone claims that the importance placed on the 12 apostles in the Gospels come from "pagan influence" this is not credible.

The reason that its not credible is because the number 12 has been extremely important in Jewish culture and scripture as far back as the records go. In addition the use of the number 12 to identify 12 helpers of a hero figure comes straight from the Hebrew scriptures.

So, when someone says that some aspect of the Jesus story was "borrowed from pagans", what I take that I mean, and what I think everyone takes that to mean, is that this element was brought in from outside the Jew culture and that this element is foreign to Jewish traditions.

The fact of the matter is that every single element of the earliest descriptions of Jesus can be clearly traced back to ideas and motifs found within well established elements of Jewish traditions that existed at the time.

The only thing that doesn't have a clear Jewish precedent is the specific act of crucifixion, but then this has no clear pagan precedents either. There is no crucified pagan god prior to Jesus and there is no crucified Jewish hero prior to Jesus, however there are many much closer parallels in the Jewish scriptures than in any pagan story. The martyrdom of the seven brothers in 2 Maccabees, the story of martyrdom of Isaiah. These both very closely resemble the Jesus story, much more closely than nay pagan story about any god.

In order to demonstrate borrowing, or even influence, one has to show that A) the parallels are in fact meaningfully close and B) that there isn't a stronger or more likely Jewish source of influence.

B is very critical and as far as I've seen, every single case of so-called "pagan parallels" fails test B if it doesn't already fail test A.

In cases where the feature in question passes tests A and B in every one of those cases the feature in question is a late developing aspect of Christianity, typically 4th century or later, but sometimes as early as the 2nd century, but very rarely are these even features that are found in the New Testament at all, such as images of Jesus with a halo that look like Apollo, etc. Yeah, very clearly there was pagan influence on early Christian artwork, because the people making that art were Roman former pagans, they were just executing the style that was a part of their culture, but this tells us nothing about where the Jesus story came from in the first place.

I'm a big stickler on the importance of the timeline of the development of the Christian works. Even when we talk about the Gospels of Matthew and John, etc. these are later works, and they very clearly show that they weer inventing new story elements that were not a part of the original Jesus framework.

Furthermore, I think that by strictly sticking to an understanding the timelines and framework within which the Jesus story developed, the historicity of the Jesus story is much more strongly undermined.

This is the irony. These "Jesus was a pagan copy" people throw everything into the pot in an attempt to draw parallels between Jesus and other pagan god with the intention of showing that Jesus was a myth. These people act as though things like "Jesus birthday on Dec. 25th" and the virgin birth are part of the "original" description of Jesus in order to be able to make claims of pagan influence.

However, if you actually look at the real facts, and acknowledge that Dec. 25th had nothing to do with Jesus early on, that a virgin birth had nothing to do with Jesus early on, etc., then you can pretty clearly see the development of the myth itself over time, which actually undermines historicity much more strongly than the stupid "pagan parallels" claims.

My view is that virtually aspect of the Jesus character and every plot element in the Gospel of Mark and every quality of Jesus in the mind of Paul, all comes from the Jewish scriptures, primarily the books of the prophets.

There is no "pagan" borrowing in the Jesus story because the borrowing from the Jewish scriptures is glaringly obvious. There is no question that Paul's description of Jesus comes from the Jewish scriptures, they don't come from reality, they don't come from stories about a real person, they don't come from "pagan" religions, they come directly from the book of Isaiah and Malachi and Daniel, and other such books. The same goes for every book in the New Testament, and this fact is not only just that, a fact, but is also undermines historicity more strongly than any "pagan parallels" claims ever could.

spamandham

Doesn't that depend on how far back you are willing to go? Surely the '12 tribes' are based on the 12 lunar cycles via even more ancient 'pagan' influence rather than 12 actual sons - and the '12 apostles' are rather obviously modeled after the 12 tribes. So the root of the 12 apostles IS of astrotheological 'pagan' origin, although not directly.

....so we're right back to Toto's question again.

dog-on

Kinda rules out JC though, doesn't it?

Malachi151

Certainly, but this doesn't qualify for Toto's question or the OP. When people say that some aspect of Jesus was "based on" or "borrowed from" some "pagan" god or tradition, they mean to the exclusion of any Jewish influence.

Saying that the 12 apostles are based on the Greek or Egyptian zodiac, for example, would be like saying that the song America the Beautiful is based on Amerigo Vespucci.

I mean, yeah, the name America comes from Amerigo Vespucci, but that isn't the basis for the author's ideas and the author of the song may not even have been aware of this fact.

The same goes for the ancient origins of Jewish religious traditions. I think that Passover is probably rooted in an ancient goat herding tradition of sacrificing a goat to bring blessing on the herd for the year at the start of the herding season in the Spring. But, very clearly, this isn't at all what Passover was taken to mean by 1st century Jews. In fact its basically certain that no 1st century Jews had even a vague concept that any of their traditions may have had any origins other than what the Torah says. 1st century Jews did not suspect that the traditional 12 Tribes of Israel were mythical and never truly existed. They did not suspect that Passover originated from earlier "pagan" type traditions.

And thus, any author in the 1st century writing a story based on Jewish traditions did not have any "pagan" concepts in mind.

The simple way to say this is simply that the basis of the Jesus character is the Jewish scriptures, period. Any "pagan" influences were those that were filtered through the larger Jewish culture and through the Jewish scriptures. That's not what people mean when they talk about Jesus being a borrowing from the myths of other pagan gods.

Amaleq13

Only if one intends to beg the question by creating a special category. I don't think a positive reply to the question really helps support the assertion, anyway. It would appear to lack any substantive data to support it. Just another baseless assertion put forth with undeserved confidence.

dog-on

Nah, I just use the primary sources, Luke and Matthew... You?

Amaleq13

Except for my first sentence, I wasn't referring to your comment but the assertion that inspired my post.

My point regarding your comment is that we have other examples of god/man hybrids in ancient mythology so creating a special category for Jesus or disqualifying seems arbitrary and question-begging.