roncuomo

I am wondering what in the Christian dogma is actually an original concept.
Many of the fundamental principals such as the virgin birth, the trinity, the resurection, heaven,creation, the soul are pilfered from various other religions and beliefs.
So what is original? Is the christian faith a clever compilation of the best that was out there?

CX

I think the truly original and creative part of Xian theology is the concept of the atonement. Xians made that bit up out of whole cloth and it is in large part responsible for the success and growth of Xianity.

roncuomo

The idea of atonement, of offering a sacrifice to atone for a sin or transgression is an ancient concept. In reading Kersey Graves, " The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors", he mentions both Burmese and Hindoo traditions of the ultimate atonement....the sacrificing of a god.
The progresion of sacrifice from fruits and vegetables to animals to humans reaches it's zenith with the offering of a god.

Toto

NOTICE:

Kersey Graves is not an authority, and any assertion derived from the Worlds 16 Crucified Savors must be backed up with other sources. Please read Richard Carrier's essay here:

Kersey Graves and The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors (2003)

Thank you for your attention.

CX

See Toto's notice vis-a-vis Kersey Graves and definitely read the Carrier article. While the concept of offerings to gods is fairly common the creativity of the earliest Xians was in taking the Jewish concept of a sin offering, substituting Jesus for the pascal animal and making a once and for all atonement for everyone past, present and future. It served the dual purpose of creating a metaphysical system which would have wide appeal and explaining the embarassing circumstances of Jesus ignominious demise. Personally I find it a brilliant bit of theological gymnastics.

RED DAVE

From CX:It is also an extraordinary appeal to masochism, which under conditions when one must endure suffering (as all poor people do), would make it extremely attractive.

RED DAVE

Craig

I don't really see it as any more or less appealing than many other religions, just lucky. It was in the lands that happened to be the ones that did the conquering/exploring about that time in history so it was brought along for the ride.

Al Kafirun

Kersey Graves be damned, atonement is by no means original. Death has been a romantic concept since forever.

I would say Christians took the worship of a would-be historical character to the extreme, but they have competition there, too.

So, no. Nothing in Christianity is original. Maybe Jesus having long hair. I dunno.

Infidelettante

As best I can think the distinction between Christ and other sacrificial gods is that Christ died once and rose from the dead only once. It seems that the sacrifice of the god was tied to seasonal changes and so he was sacrificed and reborn yearly.

This in its self raises another distinction, that being that while Christ resurrected as his adult self the Pagan gods were reborn. This is so for many Neo-Pagan traditions and may not be true mythologically. I’ll have to study that one.

JT

Roland

The thing that always makes me laugh is when Christians point with pride to the fact that the thing that allegedly separated Judaism from its neighbor religions is that the Isrealites didn't indulge in human sacrifice.

There's a rich irony in there somewhere!