Jeffrey Gibson

Umm, what's you actual evidence that by Tertullian's time Christians had gone "all out to destroy" any pagan evidence or influence, let alone a great deal of it?

Is this the case in Alexandria? In Antioch? In Ephesus? In Rome? In North Africa? In Jerusalem?

Please provide me with primary sources that support your claim.

Jeffrey

lpetrich

Acharya S, welcome to IIDB.

I hope that you realize that thoroughly checking your numerous quotes and assertions would be a herculean labor.

So why not put forth what you consider your most convincing claim and your reasons that you find it convincing, and invite us to analyze it?

If your scholarship is sound, then we can work from there. But if it is not, then I hope that you will be willing to accept the bad news, however painful it might be to you.

And the reason that we are not as nasty to Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Dr. Robert M. Price and Richard Carrier is because those gentlemen usually do not give us any reason to be nasty to them. They are usually much more careful, and they avoid making elementary mistakes and quotes out of context and use of flawed sources and the like. And when they do say dumb things, look what happens to them, like what has happened with Sam Harris with his endorsement of mystical woo-woo.

Jeffrey Gibson

And Tertullian was never Bishop of Carthage.

Jeffrey

Malachi151

To follow-up on my previous post. Every culture is full of vestiges of prior influences.

Perfect examples in the English speaking world are the names of the days of the week and the names of the months.

The days of the week are both Roman and Anglo-Saxon in origin. Tuesday through Friday are named after the Anglo-Saxon gods: Tiw, the god of war for Tuesday, Woden, the major god for Wednesday, Thor, the god of thunder for Thursday, and Frige, the goddess of love for Friday.

Likewise, July and August are named after Julius and Augustus Caesar.

What Acharya S and others do with the Gospels, in the best of cases (most times the analysis isn't even this good) is like taking something like The Grapes of Wrath, and going through it and taking every mention of a day of the week or a month and then concluding that these are all secret references to ancient Anglo-Saxon gods and Roman themes.

It would be like taking such a story that says:

"On Thursday Johnny went to work in the fields. It was a hot day, and the sweat from his brow burned as it dripped onto his hands. He was waiting, waiting for August to be over and for the winter to come, because in the winter Johnny could get back to his studies. He wanted to get out of the fields and go to a respectable school where he could make something of himself."

And then analyzing this story and concluding that it had something to do with with the god Thor and Augustus Caesar.

True, you could point out that day of Thursday originates from the day honoring the god Thor, but you have to show that this was the intent of the author.

Just because Thursday is named after the god Thor doesn't mean that people today make this association, any more than the fact that the Twelve Tribes of Israel are likely to have originated from some zodiac symbolism means that later Jews put any significant on this or thought about it in such a way.

The same for Samson supposedly being a mythical descendant from a sun god, etc., etc., throughout the Jewish scritpures. It takes more than simply showing that the root of some word comes from some other meaning in order to show a relationship between the one set of ideas and another.

The English language is filled with all kinds of words with all kinds of roots that have nothing to do with how those words are used or thought of today. Someone arguing that a story using those words is really "secretly" referring back to the original root meanings has a lot of work cut out for them.

This is a lot of what Acharya does in Suns of God, she makes claims based on lots of word associations or other types of associations, but then concludes that the people using these terms, ideas, deities, etc. were themselves aware of these facts and used them as such intentionally.

Jeffrey Gibson

No digressions here except those you are engaging in. Note how several times now, instead of answering my questions (1) about what, if any evidence you have that by Tertullian's time Christians had gone "all out to destroy" any pagan evidence or influence, let alone a great deal of it, and (2) your credentials, you've avoided them.

I ask again:

1. What's you actual evidence that by Tertullian's time Christians had gone "all out to destroy" any pagan evidence or influence, let alone a great deal of it?

Is this the case in Alexandria? In Antioch? In Ephesus? In Rome? In North Africa? In Jerusalem?

Please provide me with primary sources that support your claim.

2. Why, if you have no credentials vis a vis Biblical and Patristic Studies and Ancient History/Classical Literature, should any one here take seriously your judgments about the validity of AS's claims about matters Biblical/Patristic/Classical?

Now of course you are free to respond, as the record shows you've been doing, with non answers to these questions and aspersions, but at least do us the kindness, and have the good grace, to admit that this sort of response is a digression.

Jeffrey

Amaleq13

Why keep saying this when we have seen that he explicitly denies it?

Why do you keep harping on this point when it has nothing to do with the point I have made?

The quote of Acharya S. appears to be accurate.

The quote of Tertullian is accurate.

She misrepresented what Tertullian actually wrote.

You are simply and clearly wrong in this assertion.

Unless she subsequently contradicts herself and acknowledges that it is not true that Tertullian "ironically admits the true origins of the Christ story" because of what the paraphrase states, this is simply a red herring.

It is clear that you haven't bothered to review the actual focus of my criticism.

Amaleq13

For clarity's sake, are you suggesting that something in this longer quote somehow changes the fact that she misrepresented Tertullian or are you pointing out that the basis for her error was her apparent reliance upon Wheless?

I certainly agree that Wheless' scholarship is not something anyone should rely upon without checking it.

Acharya S

Thank you for the close reading and for demonstrating my accuracy. I don't know that Taylor's quote was "tertiary," unless, as you state, he himself was not in possession of an extant copy of the pertinent passage in Julian's writing. If Taylor were translating directly from Julian's writings, would that fact not make him a secondary source? There are many reasons Christ Con was composed the way it was. In any event, this response is directed not necessarily at you, Iasion, but to anyone who may be reading it.

I've been reading other threads here. It seems that the work of practically every writer, no matter how credentialed or skilled, will be found to be "junk" or "poor scholarship." You yourself dismiss an entire body of work as "poor scholarship" and then give a minor example of updating an antiquated word (ye => you) and a misplaced comma, both of which may have been mere typos. (The first, indeed, may have been done automatically by my word processor program.) Despite your derogatory dismissal, you then pronounce my work to be reasonably accurate.

To dismiss an entire body of work, including an overall premise that has hardly been debunked, based on a few triflings is absurd and unrealistic. Please show me ONE text of any length that is 100% error-free. No, not "even" the Bible - especially not the Bible. Any of your own? Where are your books? Please submit them to this august body of critics for "review" (death by nitpicking). Would you have a problem with that? Perhaps they would treat you with kid gloves? Or are you really that confident that they would not rip your work to shreds, as they have done with just about everyone else's, being no respecter of persons? There's an old adage about critics...and opinions.

If you have other issues - and are bringing them up politely without vitriolic and hyperbolic statements such as that my entire book constitutes "poor scholarship" - then I am open to hearing them. Updating antiquated words and misplacing commas - if that's what I did - could be considered typos, of which there certainly are too many for my liking, but these are not substantial or egregious errors for which my character needs to be assassinated as a "poor scholar."

I may be deemed "overambitious" in dealing with such a massive amount of material and such an important task, but that does not make me a "poor scholar" worthy of disparagement, disrespect and contempt. Those who believe in an invisible Jewish man floating omnipresently about in the sky who resides inside your head and can read your every thought may not like my ideas, but I do not believe that suggesting these ideas - based on logical conclusions about the ancient world - should open me up to vicious ridicule by those whose own beliefs could themselves be viewed as ridiculous.

In any event, where serious factual error can be shown - and even fairly minor errors such as substituting "bishop" for "presbyter" - I will continue to review and revise my work where necessary. In fact, I've had an errata page The Christ Conspiracy on at my website for for almost five years, and I've just added the relatively minor error about Tertullian's position - an apparent error of Joseph Wheless's, not mine.

Christ Con Errata and Addenda

Since I like to give my sources the benefit of the doubt and not merely to vituperatively dismiss them as being in error, I would need to check into why Joseph Wheless made that substitution, especially since in my opinion he has proved himself a trustworthy source. In any event, per the dictionary definition of both terms, this mistake is not the end of the world.

Bishop: "A supervisor of a number of local churches"
Presbyter: "an office bearer who exercised teaching, priestly, and administrative functions"

BriAnna

In light of there being no mods on for this forum right now, I am advising you that personal comments towards users on this forum are not allowed. If they are being cut and pasted from another forum, They still are not allowed. If you would like this conversation to continue, please stop doing that. Everyone posting here agreed to those rules when they signed up for this forum.

jjramsey

Wait a minute. This is a fuller quote from Occidental Mythology (should be on page 26 or 27, depending on the printing):
Campbell is referring to Persephone, not Semele. Interestingly enough, Freke and Gandy make the same error. In fact, I came across this very quote because I did a review of the latter's work.