Steven Carr

Do Moses or Elijah resemble Jesus in some respects?

What non-question-begging criteria does Glenn Miller use to determine whether there were parallels between the life of Jesus and the life of another person?

Steven Carr

Miller writes :- 'Ancient Near Eastern religions had long had traditions of dying-and-rising gods, general vegetation deities renewed annually in the spring.'

Early Christians , of course, used seed analogies to describe the resurrection of their god, blissfully unaware that this was a perfect analogy for the dying-and-rising of other gods, general vegetation deities, but not for their own god.


1 Clement's proof of the resurrection 'Let us behold the fruits [of the earth], how the sowing of grain takes place. The sower goes forth, and casts it into the ground; and the seed being thus scattered, though dry and naked when it fell upon the earth, is gradually dissolved. Then out of its dissolution the mighty power of the providence of the Lord raises it up again, and from one seed many arise and bring forth fruit.'

Of course, Miller is right that Christian views of resurrection had nothing whatever to do with the renewal of life in the spring, and that no trace of any influence of such concepts can be found in early Christian beliefs :-)

jjramsey

In some ways. Here we can make a case for derivation not only on grounds of similarities, which on their own are still vague, but on the fact that Jesus and his followers had heard of these personages and would have motive to deliberately allude to them.

As you might have noticed if you were paying attention, the criteria I was using were not from Glenn Miller, but from the late Allen Glenn, a.k.a. WinAce, who himself was working from what other skeptics had noted about how prophets get their predictions to match reality.

Careful, you are quoting Miller out of context. That statement is something he quoted from someone else. The full quote is below, with Miller's emphasis retained:

Miller called attention to the parts that he approved of by showing them in bold. He does not necessarily quote the whole thing with approval. If you look in a later section of the article, you'll see Miller quote Jonathan Z. Smith, who denies the part that you quoted:

Miller may not be wholly right (though here I think he happens to be on the mark), but let's not misrepresent his views, ok?

countjulian

The eaxt smae thing can be said of every god I listed. Each one was known throughout the Mediterranean, and the Christ cult had to compete with them all.

He was associated with surgeons, but the miracles he did we quite magical. Jesus used his spit to heal the eyes of a blind man, does that mean Jesus was a doctor or alchemist?

This is a lame objection anyway. The difference between "magical medicine" and "miracles" is miniscule, especially in the minds of superstitious and magically-oriented people.

Steven Carr

I did no such thing.

Miller writes ''More important, the early Christian view of resurrection is certainly derived from the Jewish doctrine rather than from the seasonal revivification of Greek cults."

I pointed out that early Christians used seasonal revivification as a proof that God can work resurrections.

jjramsey

Whether Jesus and his disciples would have heard of these gods is debatable, and as Jews, they certainly wouldn't want to emulate them. Even the more cosmopolitan Paul borrows more from Greek philosophy than Greek myth.

Read what John P. Meier wrote in A Marginal Jew about the difference between magic and miracle. Magic (and esp. magical medicine) involves much more ritual and rigamarole.

The metaphor that Paul and Clement used was that of a seed "dying" and then sprouting. This does not have to do with the changing from cold seasons (fall and winter) to warm seasons (spring and summer) and back again, unlike, say, the story of Hades, Demeter, and Persephone. The metaphor of the dying seed isn't even cyclic.

youngalexander

I did not say he did. 'Discuss' was in relation to the eucharist. I concede that you might infer it for the items in ch.14, but I meant that he discussed similarities, which he does. I was also well aware of the following;
Which is precisely what my previous two posts argued. Yet the similarities exist.

I am not responsible for other people's internet posts.

Speaking of parallels, when next in Rome I recommend a visit to St Clements, about 300m from the Colosseum. Not only is it a splendid 12thC Basilica but it stands above a 4thC Basilica which its floorplan mirrors. After exploring this 4thC B, head down the stairs to the 1stC buildings including a Mithraeum(~200?), Mithraic Triclinium, Mithraic "School" and various other areas.:grin:

youngalexander

Seems to me that you are having your cake & eating it here. The 'parallel' has been imported but should not have been.
Ditto!
Whether it be the Saturnalia, winter solstice, Sol Invictus or the Cross (ancient symbol of the sun in cultures as widely diverse as Balylonian, Hindu and Dakota (Sioux)) it is surely a little precious to argue, as RP appears to do, that somehow this is all a coincidence and Christianity is unique. As good old Joe Campbell says in the 'Masks of God'

"The recurrent mythological event of the death and resurrection of a god, which had been for millenniums the central mystery of all the great religions of the nuclear Near East, became in Christian thought an event in time, which had occurred but once, and marked the moment of the transfiguration of history."

However, they are Clauss' parallels, not mine. I have been at pains to argue that the game is of far wider scope.
Which seems to me to be far more on the money.

Folklorist Alan Dundes summarizes his work Holy Writ as Oral Lit : The Bible as Folklore with the following syllogism;
1. Folklore is characterised by multiple existence and variation.
2. The Bible is permeated with multiple existence and variation.
3. The Bible is folklore!

In an earlier work he “would argue that the lives of Joseph, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus would, from the folklorists’ point of view, be considered legends� In Quest of the Hero . Also “a folklorist normally collects as many versions of a legend as possible before trying to reconstruct a composite notion of a legendary figure’s life story�. He goes on to apply Raglan’s 22 point scheme for the Hero Pattern to Jesus, finding that he scores a very high 17. In fact 18 if tussles with demons (& Satan) are included, and 19 after the folk had spoke and elevated the ‘Bride of Christ’ to her rightful Oedipal position.

Compare Jesus’ score of 19 with that of Oedipus(22), Theseus(20), Moses(20), Dionysos(19) and Jason(15), Zeus(15), Pelops(13), Asclepios(12), Apollo(11) and especially Alexander(7) & other historicals no more than (6). As Dundes admits, this (of itself) says nothing about Jesus’ historicity. However, it does require an explanation. If salvific godmen with mytho-symbolic storylines score high on this scale, and acknowledged historicals do not, what does this say about the probabilities of MJ/HJ?

Nitpicking about this or that parallel is neither here nor there.

As Thomas L. Thompson says in The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David

"the Jesus of the Bible is an amalgamation of themes from Near Eastern mythology and traditions of kingship and divinity."

Charles H. Talbert What Is a Gospel: The Genre of the Canonical Gospels gives a detailed analysis of the myths of the 'immortals' and 'descending-ascending' gods as they apply to the gospels (as mentioned in a previous post). You might also try Richard A. Burridge What Are The Gospels?: A Comparison With Graeco-roman Biography

These guys are not dealing in parallels but hard nosed fully documented research. Copycat has nothing to do with the case.

jjramsey

From a post I made on the JREF forums:

The hero pattern is pretty useless if vague parallels count as "hits." That Oedipus and Moses get similar scores even though their stories are so different should give you pause.

countjulian

No. It's not "debatable." Whather or not you agree with The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark you have to know that by virtue of the fact that the NT writers knew Greek that they were familiar with Pagan myths. As Peter Kirby demonstrates here, http://www.christianorigins.com/euripidesluke.html , at the very least Luke was aware of popular phraseology in reference to pagan god men, familiar enough to use it. In his words

When Paul lays his heavy invective (including the death penalty) upon idolatry, when he says the idols sacrificed to are real demons, what do you think he is talking about? Do you seriously expect me to believe that someone who lived in and moved in Greek society, religious circles no less, would not know about Greek gods?

As for "Jesus and his disciples", excepting the odd letter to kings in Edessa, we have nothing (or very little) purporting to be from Jesus himself. I have to ask, how much of the literature of the NT do you believe to have been written by those disciples?

Finally, when you say that "as Jews, they certainly wouldn't want to emulate them", what do you think of Jewish synagogues around the time that had imgaes of pagan Gods? What of wierd sects like the Therepuatae and the Essenes, who seem to have burrowed freely from popular Greek religious thought? What of Philo?

Thanks for asking me to shell out yet more cash. Care to actually give an argument based on what you have read, instead of just making me do all the footwork. Tell you what, why don't you just read Robert Price's Deconstructing Jesus, Burton L. Mack's Christian Myth, and Gregory Riley's One Jesus, Many Christs to get the burrowing thesis?

Tell you what, I'll go a step beyond and actually attempt to make an argument, if only you will be so kind as to be forthcoming with information.

I notice you failed to respond to be comment on Jesus' healing of the blind man with his spit. You do know Tacitus credits Vespasian with such a deed too? Also, Jesus and the Christian God (with help from the martyrs and saints) were said to have continued healing the sick far after Jesus had ascended to heaven, just like Aesclepius. What do you make of the two cults remarkable healing attraction? when the Christians took over the Empire, the first thing some of them did was attack and destroy a shrine to Aescelpius. What do you make of this, mere coincidence? Could it be that Aesclepius was a major competitor? And if there was burrowing from one son-of-god cult to another, which one, I wonder, came first?