gstafleu

If you are interested in the subject, and are up to reading a book , a good introduction is The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. He doesn't focus on just the Jesus story, rather he shows the relationships, similarities and differences between all religions, old and new.

Gerard Stafleu

Spanky

Good book. Good read. Good author.

Chris Weimer

Right. Its your opinion that those things are true, not that you have any facts at all.

Nylla

No, actually, that's not my opinion at all. My opinion is that the editorial; the perspective, opinion of the writer, was interesting. That's all.

I hope that clears this up. Heck, I'll delete the link, I just thought the opinion was interesting. I didn't mean to cause a stir and I certainly didn't mean to give the impression the author's opinion = truth and that I agreed with it. But I did post the link, so obviously it looked that way. I'll take more care in the furture.

Truce?

Chris Weimer

Truce, just so long as you acknowledge (you can do this implicitly by not responding, if you'd like) that those things are not verified by evidence. I just don't want anyone getting the impression that those things were in any way accurate.

Nylla

You're right, and I should have said so in the OP with the link.
I understand.

Chris Weimer

Gamera

The power of pattern recognition. The critical thing is not the similarities (there are similarities between the NT and a Ikea catalog), but the differences.

chichiflys

Of course that makes sense. However, if the similarities are mainly limited to the extraordinary claims, then I would be inclined to be more skeptical of those claims. For instance, if there are similarities of a virgin birth, rising from the dead, son-of-god, etc. I would tend to think that one mythical story borrowed those claims from the other.

I will check out the book Gerard, thank you for the link.

ChiChi

Godless Raven

Actually, since Christians destroyed most of the existing evidence the best evidence of similarities between dying/resurrecting Godmen have come - with the irony noted - from the very early Christian apologists who attacked the similarities.

So either you accept the small amount of existing evidence that there were several other resurrecting Godmen with similarities that are beyond coincidence or;

You believe the early fathers of Christianity who helped form it in to what it is today when they point out those similarities by attacking them (with the inpenetrable 'Diabolical Mimicry' defense).

Or...you have some new evidence other than these two. If so, what is it?