andrewcriddle

Could you provide evidence that one of Attis, Buddha, Dionysus, Horus or Krishna was hung on a pole ?

Thank You

Andrew Criddle

Amaleq13

Have you checked Josephus? He tells a story about three guys getting crucified and one surviving. He also tells of hundreds of Jewish holy men getting crucified over the previous two centuries.

Have you read Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross (or via: amazon.co.uk)? If not, I can safely say that your research is woefully incomplete.

patcleaver

Attis, who was called the "Only Begotten Son" - Knight, Ancient Art and Mythology, p. xxii.

He [Attis] was represented by them as a man tied to a tree, at the foot of which was a lamb (Dupuls, Origin of Religious Belief, p. 255).

Attys, who was called the "Only-Begotten Son" and "Saviour" was worshiped by the Phygians (who were regarded as one of the oldest races of Asia Minor). He was represented by them as a man tied to a tree, at the foot of which was a lamb, and, without doubt also as a man nailed to the tree, or stake, for we find Lactantius making ... Apollo of Miletus ... say that "He was a mortal according to the flesh; wise in miraculous works; but, being arrested by an armed force by command of the Chaldean judges, he suffered a death made bitter with nails and stakes. - T.W. Doane, Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions, 1882, p190-191

In the Attis festival a pine tree was felled on the 22nd of March and an effigy of the god was affixed to it, thus being slain and hanged on a tree ... at night the priests found the tomb illuminated from within but empty, since on the third day Attis had arisen from the grave. John C. Jackson, Christianity Before Christ, 1985, p67

Galatians 3:1-5 - O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?

Since the drama or passion of Attis that was described by Jackson took place in Galatia, and the Galatians could not have been in Jerusalem, then the "Jesus Christ" that Paul says was "publicly portrayed as crucified" before their eyes must be Attis.

In early Christian art, it was common to see Jesus depicted tied hand and foot to a simple upright stake. History of Our Lord in Art, 1864, Lady Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake.

Paul was probably preaching the passion of Attis at a time that it was popular to refer to Attis as "Jesus Christ". Just like some sects of Christianity refer to Jesus as "the lord" and other sects refer to him as "Christ".

Alternatively, Paul may have been preaching the Mithraism of Judea which simply included resurrection, but we have no record of their beliefs except Paul.

Alternatively, Paul could be preaching Mithraism, and just made up the resurrection stuff himself based on his dreams.

Galatians 1:11-12 - The Gospel I preach to you is no human invention. No man gave it to me, no man taught it to me; it came to me as a direct revelation from Jesus Christ.

Alternatively, Paul might be fictional.

Alternatively, all of Paul's letters could be frauds. Christians left most of the letters of Paul out of the cannon and claimed they were frauds, why should we believe that the others are not frauds.

Solitary Man

You've said so much, but actually provided nothing like "evidence".

mountainman

Sounds like the story of the case of the study
of "Biblical Historians" who, by staying close to
their Eusebius, can postulate a population
distribution for pre-nicene christians in the major
cities of the empire, equipped with demographics,
case studies and moralistic interspersions.

See the Prosenes inscription at Rome, or perhaps,
more appropriately, the Basilides inscription, which
is accepted as "Christian" on the basis of its text:

" He Sleeps "


Best wishes,



Pete Brown

patcleaver

Exactly.

There is no evidence at all that Paul was not simply another pagan. All we know is that the "churches" that Paul wrote letters to were centers of pagan religions. We can not find anything in Paul that does not fit pagan beliefs.

There is no evidence at all that the Gospels are not simply fiction. There is lots of evidence that they are fiction, such as:

they are full of fictional devices that are very rarely used in biography (e.g. tragedy, foreshadow, surprise, impossible to witness events/conversations, mystery, irony, amazing coincidence, miracles, destiny, super-heroism),

they were anonymous - which is sometimes true for fiction but rare for biography,

they are based on earlier fictions (paganism), and on the old testament (midrash), and on other Greek stories (e.g. Homer's Odyssey ),

the other Gospels copied Mark and changed the words/deeds of Jesus simply for aesthetic purposes.

There are thousands of ancient non-Christian religious documents from hundreds of other religions and Christians think that they are all fiction. There is no reason that the gospels are any more likely to be non-fiction as any of those non-Christian documents.

Religious and political literature is the most likely to be corrupted. Josephus is mostly historical, yet it contains fictional stories and there are thousands of differences between different versions of Josephus. The dates given for Paul and the gospels is just wishful thinking. Textual analysis can not establish anything but the earliest possible date, and even that depends on things that are simply not true about the Gospels, such as, the reliability of the text, and that copiers did not use earlier styles.

The Khaburis Codex was originally dated from 120 CE by textual analysis. It was believed to be the oldest copy of the bible. Later it was carbon dated to between 1040 and 1090 CE. It had to have been copied many times, yet it was in a textual style from around 120 CE and it contained notes in margins about the activities of Moslems, from a Bishop who lived around 700 CE.

If there were revisions of Mark it could have originated hundreds of years BC or, as far as we know, it could have been written as late as the 10th century when we have the earliest carbon dated copies of the canonical gospels.

Nothing like "evidence".

makerowner

Ancient biographies often contained these things.

The prevailing belief among NT scholars is that Matthew and Luke had Mark and another gospel known as Q, of which no copies currently exist. They also had their own traditions.

'Textual analysis' is different than 'orthographic analysis'. The former refers to an analysis of the language and content of the text, while the later refers only to the orthography, ie. the physical writing on the page.

The original dating was not a scholarly textual analysis. See here.

gMark is mentioned or quoted by various Church Fathers from the 2nd century IIRC, so there was a text known as the Gospel of Mark around at that time. Whether it was identical or similar to the modern text can't be known for certain.

George S

For a peek at Early Christianities, I would recommend this scholarly work of Bart Ehrman, Chair, Dept of Religious Studies, UNC

If you don't like reading Greek orthography and discussing how the style of Greek phrases shows copyist additions (replete with footnotes, differing points of view), I might recommend his Misquoting Jesus which is aimed at a more general audience.

andrewcriddle

I'm concentrating on this because it actually gives a reference in an ancient source.

The quote from Lactantius is online here http://www.tertullian.org/fathers2/A...m#P1114_500295 I can see no evidence at all that this supposed prophecy has any reference to Attis.

Andrew Criddle

Toto

Pat Cleaver's post seems to be a close summary of Acharya S's The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever [S]old around page 108 [oops - that's a magic number!] - available on Google books - although Google Books changed the title to The Greatest Story Ever Told ?!?!?