capnkirk

I have read Suns of God, and while I think she has some valid points, I also think that she has succumbed to overstating them. However, the most frustrating feature of Suns of God was the disorganization, the lack of continuity. I really got the impression I was reading her notes, not her finished composition. Perhaps it is just her poor command of English, but it makes it difficult to see through to her scholarship.

That in its fundamental features, Xtianity strongly resembles the fundamental features of the various savior cults prominent in the eastern Mediterranean at the time, I have no doubt. That Xtianity flourished first in the Hellenized cultures of Syria, Greece, Rome, and Egypt before it came to be accepted in Palestine (where the events allegedly transpired) supports the premise that Xtianity had more in common with those cultures than it did with the culture of the people who would have shared directly in the a priori events. To begin to discover just how this came to be requires serious investigation into not only the areas that Achaya has presented, but also into Greek neo-Platonism, and into the ways that these cults came to be popular before Xtianity.

The one feature of all of these that keeps drawing me back to the Greeks is that each of these cults promised personal, individual salvation, rather than the traditional eastern concept of collective salvation.

Freethinkaluva

LOL, no GakuseiDon you haven't actually read her books and you've admitted it in the links you just shared too. The best that you could do was, as you say, skim Acharya's books to find whatever you could to make your best attempt to trash it - following the footsteps of your hero JP Holding, who has no biblical credentials whatsover and neither do you.

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Amaleq13

Please avoid dragging baggage in from other discussion boards and focus on the evidence/arguments presented here.

Thanks in advance,


Amaleq13, BC&H moderator

Rick Sumner

It's been one of those days where I've wondered why I got out of bed at all. . .that, right there, is why. Doughboy crucified--gold. I haven't laughed that hard in weeks.

:notworthy: :notworthy:

Regards,
Rick Sumner

youngalexander

You may sneer unbeliever - for you have not as yet been touched by his spongy appendage!

Freethinkaluva

You are right GD, we should all succumb to your belief system...

burning flames

this is a commentary, not my words:

Zeitgeist is unbelievably poorly researched. It is a scholar's worst nightmare.

General comments regarding the, uh, 'facts' that they cite:

Jesus was not born on December 25. It's not in the Bible. All but the most uninformed Christians know this.

What was really funny was when they showed the Orpheus medallion--which is a proven forgery! That they show it in with a bunch of other supposed--and I cannot stress enough how far they stretch their material--betrays at best an unfamiliarity with the very subject material that they (ab)use.

They severely load their language through the introduction to Part I. That they don't even mention what material they're using throughout the video certainly does not help their credibility any.

When they start talking about how the sun fits into the zodiac, being "known as God's Sun" (excuse me, just because sun sounds like son in English doesn't mean it sounds the same in Hebrew or Greek), "the light of the world," "the savior of humankind," they don't bother to quote their source. Bad move. Then again, if I were the producer of this, I'd be pretty hesitant about revealing my source material too.

Horus: they abysmally fail to cite their sources for their information. If this were turned in for college credit, I would not hesitate to fail them for their lack of proper citation. Why aren't they more forthcoming about the evidence itself for the things they claim, rather than just spitting them out rapid-fire? (Never mind that they equivocate the Egyptian name Set for the phenomenological language used in the English word 'sunset.)

Attis: ditto. Where's the beef? Where's the source material itself? Where are the relevant scholars?

Krishna: ditto.

Dionysius: ditto, except with the, ahem, Orpheus amulet forgery. Nice going, boys.

Mithra: Here's where their shoddy work really shows through. They claim it's the Persian iteration, when they go on to describe the Roman iteration--which only got most of the attributes that they claim for him until after 350 or 400 AD--in other words, the Mithra cult borrowed from the Christians, not the other way around! Ditto with the source material and relevant Mithraic sources such as Edwin Yamauchi. What do they have to lose by seeking his input?

(Intermission: Shadowman, how familiar were you with the material in that video before you came across it? Is this stuff new to you?)

The most recent "solar messiah" :ahem: is Mithras, not Christ. Though possibly Mazdaism, with the 9th century additions to the text possibly borrowing from Christian themes, may be the winner. They got that wrong.

Jesus wasn't a "child teacher" at the age of 12.

They completely beg the question about the birth of Jesus being astrological. What business did Jewish writers have with pagan theology? Did this not cross their minds?

Once again, no source material for why the astrological explanation is true. Do they want us to just take it on faith?

One thing I noticed is that they rely on later Christian artwork to try to make their point about the three kings being there at the birth of Christ--in Scripture (which they very clearly ignore) Jesus would have been between a few months old and two years old (hence Herod's slaughter of all male children two years old and younger.

Major, major fail on the "Mary" being a copycat figure. No source material quoted either. Again with the begged question of completely clashing religions with the astrological stuff.

(It should be mentioned at this point that the YouTube video cuts off right here. Their claim that they have 'more evidence' for Jesus being an astrological copycat savior is, to say the least, unfounded.)

About the zodiac itself: I'd like some other input on this, if anyone has the info.

The sources they quote aren't even qualified within the fields they pretend to be in:

Acharya S--no degree in the relevant fields of NT studies. Instead on her Wikipedia entry we see: "Acharya is classically educated in archaeology, history, mythology, and languages." It does mention that she has a Bachelor's in Classics(?) and Greek Civilization. This does not make her qualified to say the things she does about Christianity.
That's a pretty dang vague description of her, uhm, 'expertise.'

This page exposes the horrendous scholarship in the main work that Zeitgeist used to make their claims.

John Allegro? Please. His major hypothesis for the origins of Christianity was that they all took hallucinogenic mushrooms. He was a philologist, which puts him a good deal closer to being a relevant authority on the New Testament, but he fell way short because of his truly whack-job theories that flew in the face of the rest of scholarship.

Some of the sources they quote from are well over a hundred years old, and most of it that's dated to before 1945 (give or take a few years) has been soundly refuted by modern scholarship on the text and archeology of the NT.

They've got some other really dim bulbs there:
Thomas Paine. He didn't know diddly when it came to understanding the NT, its social and cultural context, or theism in general. Not a reputable source.
Earl Doherty, Brian Flemming, Joseph Wheeless: a veritable who's-who of quacks when it comes to NT studies.

Yellum Notnef

Who's words are they?

(And calm down Christian apologists and other fanatics who can't even begin to imagine a world without a historical Jesus, I'm not defending or making any comment at all about the film. Step away from your keyboard and take a breath.)

burning flames

I made a thread about this movie on a christian message board, and that was the first response

Yellum Notnef

Oh, that figures.
I just asked because I noticed that two of the links in it were to Tektonics and the not so Venerable Bede.
Both could possibly be correct about various points in the film, but each being rabid Christian apologists make them unsafe to trust any further than you can throw em.