Yellum Notnef

What that all boils down to, mrsonic, is that Roger believes not only that Jesus was special among the gods of antiquity, but also very real and magical.

I think that probably answers your question. Not that it means anything Roger said is incorrect, just that there is a bias which certain facts may be filtered through.

ApostateAbe

If everything Roger Pearse said is correct, and well-reasoned to boot, then why try to explain it with anything but a capably-thinking mind?

stephan huller

I inevitably avoid these debates because I am never sure whose side I'm on. Nevertheless if we are going to look at the facts it has to be said that the two most important pieces of evidence are (1) Justin's statement that the Devil was responsible for the similarities between Christ and Mithras and (2) Celsus's statement that the Christians stole their mysteries from the Persians (Book Six from memory). Most people ignore the last reference and it is difficult to put in context because it is clearly the Alexandrian Church he is criticizing (it immediately follows a claim that the evangelist - presumably Mark - stole the Question of the Rich Man pericope from Plato's Laws). This is a Carpocratian gospel interpretation which seems to have something do with similar statements made in Book Three of the Stromateis. Celsus seems to connect the Persian mysteries and their interest in the seven planets with some sort of an Alexandrian diagram with nine or ten circles which Origen identifies as 'Ophite' but Celsus never identifies it as such. The ten spheres are clearly known to Clement in the Stromateis which - once again - demonstrates the Alexandrians original rooting in such 'heresy.'

The point again is that if we are to have a meaningful discussion about Christian or Persian 'borrowings' from one another we have to be careful not to simply walk down traditional debates about Xmas. There is more to it than that.

Yellum Notnef

There's a lot here that we just have to take Rogers word on and I'm not so sure that someone with a bias that Christianity is true can be trusted to look at all the material without a little tint in his glasses. He did , after all, take up the mantle of Mithra detective as a bit of a crusade against it before he had even seen much of the alleged evidence. In other words, he found and didn't find what he expected/wanted/needed to and the baby Jesus still sleeps snug in his bed.

Roger may or not be correct about Mithra, who knows? I'm just saying that anyone who thinks the matter is important enough to demand an answer might want take Rogers final judgement on it with a grain of salt.

Roger Pearse

Since Dave31 kindly responded to my query about where Mithras -- or indeed Osiris -- is described in ancient sources as having a "Last Supper" with some material, I thought it might be interesting to research that material and see what it said.

None of the references in Acharya S are to Mithras -- not something Dave31 made clear -- but all are instead to Osiris. We can find them using the online preview at Google Books. Here's what I found.

There are two references in the book to a "Last Supper".

But when we look at the Plutarch, as above, it merely refers to some "festivities", not to any "sort of Last Supper". "Babbitt" is the Loeb editor, whose translation we quoted above, so Acharya S is using the same translation that we are.

It seems that Dave31 has simply reproduced whatever he found in Acharya S, although I don't think he actually says that this is what he has done. The unwary might suppose these references were things he had collected and verified himself. That's rather unfortunate, as liable to mislead other atheists.

So what do we think of this? Well, I think we can immediately see that the statements of Acharya S are dodgy. The term "Last Supper" is intruded into this, by her, without obvious reason. This leads people like Dave31 to suppose that she's actually produced evidence, when all she has done is stick Christian terminology on something not evidently related to it in any way.

The second piece quoted is curious -- just why is Osiris sitting at the head of the Ennead somehow like the Last Supper of Jesus? If anyone sits on top table in college, does that mean they are Jesus at the Last Supper?

This seems to be the Acharya S method -- find a rock and call it a virgin, find a zodiac and call it 12 disciples, find a meeting and call it a last supper. And then, based on this misuse of words, assert that the Christians borrowed their ideas from this.

Still, I suppose she would say it sells books.

What about the references to "Faulkner"? This is to "Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts", which is in two volumes. Unfortunately I have no access to this. But I am quite prepared to believe that an ancient Egyptian text refers to Osiris at the head of the Ennead of gods, or Horus likewise after Osiris' death. But what I don't believe, and nothing in Acharya S gives us any reasons to think that we should, is that this is described in the ancient Egyptian sources referenced, as a "Last Supper".

To summarise: in response to a direct demand for ancient evidence for Mithras or Osiris having a "Last Supper", a phrase used by Dave31 without prompting, we get some stuff from the Acharya S book about Osiris (only), all rather dodgy and none of which justifies the point made.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

ApostateAbe

Well, I think you can trust him on this point, because, if there was any evidence to be found, then you can be sure that it would have been found by Acharya S or any one of her resourceful allies in the mythicist business, and yet she keeps on citing 19th century Christian universalist authors and mythicist authors as her primary evidence. I went on the hunt for the evidence, myself, repeatedly, and I found nothing, except, of course, modern myths. That is how I first changed my mind about it.

DCHindley

Wasn't Mithra that giant caterpillar which kept spraying Gamera and Godzilla with silk in that Japanese movie from the 1960s?

DCH

Yellum Notnef

Changed your mind about a historical Jesus or just Christians copying Mithra?

I think those are both questions we can't answer one way or another due to lack of evidence and dubious sources for evidence we do have.

ApostateAbe

I changed my mind about Christians copying Mithra, after looking for the evidence and finding only modern myth. Concluding that there was a historical Jesus was later and of a different argument.

There are a handful of things that we do know about the ancient mythical deities, which makes the proposition that Christians significantly copied from them to be prima facie implausible. We can leave it open as a possibility, but it is no more probable than any other bizarre proposition of history out there. The substance of it is wishful thinking, not evidence or probability.

Toto

I doubt that this is the case. Acharya S has read the old 19th century authors, but she and her followers have not brought modern scholarly methods to the area to bring it up to current standards.

Richard Carrier wrote on Kersey Graves in 2003