Tim Holt

To be fair, Justin is bending over backwards to emphasise the similarities between Christianity and other religions in order to argue that its adherents should be treated like the adherents of other religions (i.e. not persecuted).

Even with that motive, some of the similarities he finds are comically weak, e.g.:

• Bacchus was the discoverer of the vine.
• Bellerophon ascended to heaven on his horse Pegasus.
• Hercules was strong, and had journeyed over the whole earth.

dog-on

An apology for the apologist?

Tim Holt

Would that be a meta-apology?

GakuseiDon

Justin explains why the similarities are so weak: The devil got them wrong! From his First Apology:

"And these things were said both among the Greeks and among all nations where they [the demons] heard the prophets foretelling that Christ would specially be believed in; but that in hearing what was said by the prophets they did not accurately understand it, but imitated what was said of our Christ, like men who are in error, we will make plain."

Justin was a "pagan myther" -- he argued that the OT was older than the Greek writings, so the similarities between them showed that the Greeks copied from the OT (and, by extension, that Christianity was older than paganism).

GakuseiDon

Justin's logic is the same used by many mythicists today:
1. The OT is older than Greek writings.
2. There are similarities between them.
3. Therefore the Greeks copied from the OT.

Roger Pearse

I wouldn't claim to know, but I would ask to see evidence. Would you like to find out which ancient or medieval text contains these statements, if any? (With all these Newagers around, there is any amount of lying going on about this sort of stuff).

All the best,

Roger Pearse