Solitary Man

Just so we're clear, Horus never died, Osiris was never crucified, and Osiris never was brought back to life in order to conquer death. The real parallels just aren't there. You're finding parallels where they don't exist. No one has been able to find one solid parallel. Robert Price even goes so far to think the evidence is lost (I wonder where we heard that before *cough*xtianapologists*cough*).

Toto

You can find picky little differences if you need to. I think that just shows that Christianity was not a deliberate case of unimaginative copy-cat plagiarism. But that's not what most mythicists argue.

badger3k

That sounds like the argument that if every detail doesn't match, then there is no relationship. Robert Price even brings up this point in his books. I agree that they reflect a genre (if you will) of mythology that was in existence and formed the basis for part of the Christ myth.

Solitary Man

This needs to be demonstrated, not assumed. And to Toto, yes, many mythicists here, including this new "archaeologist", do argue that Christianity is a copy-cat religion. It's bunk. Both theories.

patcleaver

You don’t know anything about Troy, so your assertions about it are completely unfounded – like most of your blather. Why don’t you do some research and then we can discuss it.

Solitary Man

That's funny. I would have thought that my actual training in the subject should be counted for something. What would you like to know about it? I think I can dig up my old papers on the topic.

gurugeorge

It's demonstrated by the parallels. i.e., the parallels do not demonstrate copying (that would require the kind of argument you are calling for), but they do demonstrate some kinds of similar ideas being "in the air" at the time.

Solitary Man

No, they do not. That has to be proved yet. You're still assuming it.

patcleaver

Is Troy a myth or a real ancient city like Tyre?

Wealthy amateur archeologist Heinrich Schliemann claimed that Hisarlik Turkey was the site of ancient Troy in the 1870's.

The Iliad is an ancient epic poem. Such poems are usually fiction - most of them are the adventures of heros and gods that are obviously purely fictional. The Iliad contains lots of things that are clearly fictional. Why should we assume that there is a real Troy?

Homer may have simply made up the description of Troy's geography. Whenever there is a fictional description of some place, then there must be some real place that most closely parallels that fictional place. There are hundreds of ancient cities and ruins along the Meditaranian coast.

If Homer was aware of an ancient destroyed city at Hisarlik Turkey, he may have modeled his Troy after it, much like the author of the Book of Joshua used the ancient ruins called Jericho in his story. Whether Homer made up the geography or modeled his story after some ancient ruins, I think it would be fair to say that Troy was a myth.

What are the geographic parallels and differences between the description of Troy in the Iliad and the ancient geography of Hisarlik? For example, On the ocean vs. 10 Km from the sea. Uncrossable rivers in deep goarges vs. small surface rivers that a child could walk across.

Harbors fill up, rivers change their course, seismic activity raises and lowers land significantly changing geography. How do we know that 3500 years ago another site did not have better geographic parallels than present day Hisarlik.

What are the historic parallels and differences between the description of Troy in the Iliad and the history of Hisarlik? We have lots of writing from ancient Persia, and the location of Hisarlik would have been in the Persian empire. Why is there no mention of "Troy" in the ancient Persian Literature? Why is Troy described as a city state with a king in charge, when there were no independent city states or kings in the Persian empire.

premjan

Troy was long before the Persians came around, probably in the 13th century BC if at all.