jgibson000

What university did you go to?

You think your insults are hilarious?

But the question -- so far as the matter of whether or not Pagan mythology and especially the mythology of Dionysus is the source for the stories of Jesus' birth -- cannot be answered unless we have before us what Pagan mythographers said about the nature of that birth and the circumstances in which it occured. Surley, even with your tendencies to play the ILIQIOS, you recognize that

So if anyone is evading anything, Joseph, it's you -- in giving us the very data that we will need to decide the matter at hand.

Are you unable to give it? Or are you able, but in not giving it are just being a TRIMALAKA?

Jeffrey Gibson

Alf

I have been reading a bit back and forth here and I cannot help myself but feeling that jeffrey is missing the point slightly.

Yes, we can look at exact formulations in greek and see if they match or not, but is that really so important as Jeffrey claims? It would be important if the people at ancient times read these stories from books or went to theatre and watched the plays and knew them in detail and knew exactly what was said and meant. Of course this is not true. It was perhaps some intellecturals who did go to theatre and matches Jeffrey's assumption but they were typically not the earliest christians - the earliest christians were poor and uneducated and they may have heard some of these stories but most likely not firsthand and they did not have an expert's view of them - they had a casual view and then the exact formulations aren't so important any more. Even slight similarities can be important and people identify the stories with another etc. Also, they did not want exact match - The gospel writers did not want Jesus to be exactly like Dionysus - they wanted him to be "at least as great as" and most likely "greater than" Dionysus and so an exact match is not what they wanted but an approximate match and then some other stories in addition to make Jesus appear as much greater than Dionysus.

I therefore strongly feel that waving the greek text and exact interpretation of it as missing the point.

Alf

Chris Weimer

Alf,

But do we have a trajectory? The claim is that the earliest Christians knew these stories second-hand - how could they know so much but so warped without the plays? Was it oral tradition? Did they have liturgical or magical works in front of them? Merely saying, "look! dionysius says this, and then Jesus says the same thing, so they're fiction!" is entirely missing half of standard historical scholarship - and not just recent, but standard for centuries. If we accepted any parallel, then Chinese would be related to Aztec and Sanskrit would be the ancestor of Greek and Latin. We border on the absurd.

I mention certain "rules" on my blog. Read it here.

best regards,

Chris Weimer

Alf

Such comparisons as given above is what christians usually excel at. You can pick any ancient text which has any similarity with the bible and the christian can quickly point out exactly why the bible is superior to the text you picked.

As such they have much in common with 4 years olds playing in a sand box. My dad is stronger than your dad, says one boy. The other responds: My dad is stronger than your dad, he can lift a car! Now, it is most likely not true that his dad can lift a car but as long as the other 4 year old believes it, that is all fine.

Christians say "My God is better than your god" and it has essentially the same ring of truth as the 4-year old's claim that his dad is stronger than the other 4 year old's dad.

My point is that of course there are dissimilarities. The question is - where do these stories and ideas come from? And to answer that you have to look at the similarities - not the disimiliarities.

Also, while a christian can quickly point out why the bible is superior to for example the qu'ran, a muslim can just as quickly point out why the qu'ran is superior to the bible. This is also something that many christians tend to be unaware of or ignore if they are aware of it.

I therefore find the comments you gave above - where you point out the differences to be not very illuminating. They would be if you could show that it really is a completely different stories, but you cannot. You can only point to some differences here and there but not enough to make them completely unrelated and that is why the argumentation fall apart.

Alf

Alf

Err.. christians don't believe that Jesus had no divinity. They believe he is 100 percent divine and 100 percent human and 200 percent full of himself. Well, that is the modern view.

What they widely believed in 2nd century we are not quite sure of but if you take mark as the earliest gospel you can clearly see a move from human-like Jesus in Mark to a more divine jesus as the later gospels were added on and in john he is fully divine and existed pre creation. I would say that is pretty good evidence that how christians viewed Jesus experienced a shift during those early years from more or less a human to something that is fully divine and to the modern view as I described above where he is 100 percent human AND 100 percent divine and 200 percent full of himself.

Alf

Chris Weimer

If you're discounting parallels coming from Christians, why aren't you discounting parallels which try to discount Christianity? Is this a double standard, or am I reading you wrong?

However, the burden of proof lies on the person making the positive claim, in this case, that our status quo of Christian origins is wrong, and that Jesus is a composite god.

Parallelism is by and large outdated scholarship. It hasn't been taken seriously in over a century. Etymology is where you can really smell the stench of parallel finding - and it stinks.

Check out my blogpost here.

Chris Weimer

Alf,

It doesn't matter in the least what the earliest Christians think. Their theology is irrelevant to what ancient Christians, the very earliest, thought. That is the point of all this, isn't it?

Chris

Alf

Aren't you jumping ahead of yourself here?

Let us follow your criteria with respect to the persian and indian myths...

Are you claiming that the christians myths are older than the persian and indian myths?

Surely no! Thus, this criteria cannot be it.

Are you saying that they were not in contact? cough, cough, Alexander, cough, cough.

Clearly, this does not hold true either. We have reports of Indian fakirs in easter roman empire. True, buddhism didn't make a big hit in the roman empire - I guess they found the religion to be too different and strange. However, that they had influences is clearly seen. The golden rule in the bible for example is a clear rip-off from eastern ethics.

So this rule also do not support your claim.

This one hinges on the other previous 2 which we saw did not support your claim.

I am not saying that it is not bunk. It might be that you are right and that such theories are bunk - however, your arguments above did not in any way support such an assertion.

Try again.

Alf

Chris Weimer

You seemed to have missed not only this point, but the point of the entire debate. The earliest form of Christianity lacks much of the later myths, so to say that Christianity was born out of these other religions because of later mythology is clearly wrong.

Direct contact? Even with the unlearned? I need some serious examples.

Is it? What do you make of Leviticus 19.18 or Tobit 4.15? One would think that a Jewish text which heavily quotes other Jewish texts might *gasp* get its sources from the very same Jewish texts!

I made no claims in that post. Those are guidelines, not even developed by me, to follow in evaluating. And yes, see above, you fail to make a convincing case to look East what is plainly under your nose in the same location. Occam's Razor says "bye bye" to that little theory.

Alf

I am saying that what is important in such comparison is not where they differ. There are of course differences - the christians did not want their stories to be identical with the competition - how could they claim superiority if they were? You have to look at their similarities and ask if they are accidental or if they are not if they have a common source or if not which one of them is source of the other. Just listing where they differ is besides the point.

I don't know where you get the idea of double standard from. We have numerous examples of stories changing and evolving as it moves from one gegraphical area to another. It is only christians who claim that their stories are unique and do not have any source except divine origin or whatever. These standards are what we always apply to any ancient stories - it is only that christians want those standards to be suspended when considering christian stories and that is what we object to. If anyone have double standards it is christians - not those of us who apply the same standard to the christian stories as we do to other stories.

Duh, that various myths, legends and stories has "wandered" from one culture to another is not just a theory but an established fact. As a consequence you will find parallells here and there - the question is where they are and what they signify. True, it is here that you can easily stumble and that is why one should take any findings solely based on parallells with a grain of salt if not more. However, to claim that there are no similarities at all would be quite outrageous - I don't think anyone could be taken seriously if they made that claim.

Also, the claim that our current "knowledge" of the christian origin is wrong is fairly easy to make and is most certainly true. True, it might be hard to prove in practice but simply pointing out that there is much we do not know about it and many people have throughout the years made very positive and firm claims about it without any knowledge to back it up and just because a claim is old and have not been disputed for many years does not make it true and so we can conclude that our current understanding is most likely not exactly true. Unfortunately while this reasoning can easily convince us that our current understanding of the origin is most likely false it helps us little in finding out in what way it is false and what would be true.

Just pointing out that your claim above is as such fairly easily shown to be false but that doesn't quite help us as the reasoning cannot show us what is true and exactly where it is false. However, it is most certain that our current status quo as you call it is false. That is most likely always true.

Alf