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04-03-2008, 08:13 PM | #31 |
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It is well accepted that later Christians adopted the image of Isis and Horus to represent the Virgin and Baby Jesus. This does't show where the original story came from.
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04-04-2008, 02:11 AM | #32 | |
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What I don't understand is why myths should have to fit exactly in all their points. Why do we have to posit direct borrowing from one myth to another? Couldn't myths evolve divergently (with some cross-fertilisation of course) from common ancestors?
I recently found this about Osiris in Mettinger's "The Riddle of [the] Resurrection (or via: amazon.co.uk)": Quote:
1. The figures are deities, but Jesus was human. 2. The dying and rising gods were closely related to the seasonal cycle, whereas the death and resurrection of Jesus was a one-time event. 3. The death of Jesus is presented as a vicarious atonement for sins, but there is no evidence of the death of the dying and rising gods as a vicarious atonement for sins. (my paraphrase - sorry, too lazy to type it all out). re. point 1: well I think the Dougherty type MJers claim that he was more a god than a man to Paul. re. point 2: Easter is celebrated regularly though, isn't it? re. point 3: Wasn't there also the idea that he defeated death through his resurrection? The author rejects the idea that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, but is open to the idea that elements from the dying and rising gods might have been used after the event to describe the death and resurrection. I am not sure about his reasons for rejecting the pure Jesus myth, however, as am not sure that such a high level of parallel is necessary. To me it is still a mystery. |
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04-04-2008, 02:19 AM | #33 | ||
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04-04-2008, 03:47 AM | #34 | ||||||
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No insult was intended; rather, I have found that there is loads of stuff online by people who know nothing about ancient Egypt, peddling crank ideas. We have to be wary of this stuff. Nothing is worse, surely, than for us to be relying on some half-remembered statement which turns out to be a piece of imagination by someone who never checked his facts? Quote:
Am I Jesus, because my mum held me in her arms? After all, when I came into the office this morning, the boss looked up and went "Oh Jesus". Can stronger evidence be imagined? :-) Quote:
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All the best, Roger Pearse |
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04-04-2008, 03:49 AM | #35 | |
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All the best, Roger Pearse |
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04-04-2008, 05:31 AM | #36 | ||
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re point 1: actually this dates back past Doherty to G.A.Wells, who however did not deny hat Paul believed JC was a human (in distant past, according to him). Noone has yet (TMK) touched the possibility that Paul's Christ myth has developed from a theological polemic of Paul with (pricipally) the Nazarene memorial cult of Jesus in which Paul actually opposed the teachings imputed to the (historical) Jesus. re point 2: and so are nearly all memorial celebrations... re point 3: the very point on which Paul battled the Nazarene ecstatics. They, and likely Jesus, believed that the repentance of sins and a ritual baptismal initiation (likely involving a mock burial) bought them a kingdom of God on earth. Paul transformed that belief into a thesis of the expiatory death of Jesus on the Cross and interpreted the "internal events" of manio-depressive states associated with Jesus beliefs about resurrection into the now familiar X-ian theology of Jesus' glorious afterlife. Jiri |
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04-04-2008, 06:16 AM | #37 | |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horus Isis fashioned a golden phallus thus Horus... http://touregypt.net/godsofegypt/legendofosiris.htm Isis conceived Horus after the death the Osiris, but prior to his dismemberment. http://www.pantheon.org/articles/o/osiris.html Doesn't specify when Isis conceived Horus. I have to go out or I would look for more. It is consistent that Osiris had died prior to the conception. Can a dead man copulate? (Did I really just ask that?) **I have never said that the Egyptian version of a "virgin birth" is the ultimate original version, it may have been borrowed from elsewhere. I honestly don't know either way, but I wouldn't be surprised. What I was really saying was that just because it's a very old story, it doesn't mean christianity (or any other religion) is true. I was hoping that this would make sense in the morning...I think I've just confused myself. |
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04-04-2008, 06:32 AM | #38 |
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[QUOTE]spontaneous generation
The belief that lower forms of life might spontaneously arise from non-living material. It stemmed from everyday (but incomplete) observations such as that insects and worms appeared from rotting meat, frogs from mud, and mice from rotting wheat. Spontaneous generation was proposed by Aristotle, espoused by theologians in the Middle Ages, including Thomas Aquinas, and upheld by the likes of William Harvey and Isaac Newton. Only when the hypothesis was properly put to the test by experiments, such as those of Redi (1668) Spallanzani (1765), de La Tour (1837), Schwann and, most decisively, by Pasteur (1862), was it seen to be in error. Any lingering doubts were removed by the work of Tyndall. However, the notion that life can develop from non-life, albeit over many millions of years, has been revived in the modern concept of the origin of life from prebiotic chemicals. [/QUOTE] http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclo.../spontgen.html Virgin births are not that different to insects generating from mud. |
04-04-2008, 08:12 AM | #39 | |||||
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Also, we're dealing with amateurish websites here, unfortunately. (Not having a go, but introducing some sanity) Shouldn't we be trying to use ancient primary sources? Quote:
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From here I find the usual suspects invoked. Acharya S, from here, crediting one Joseph McCabe (Joseph McCabe, "The Story of Religious Controversy," Stratford Co, (1929)). (A seemingly irrelevant quote from J.G.Frazer follows). "Whatever we make of the original myth…Isis seems to have been originally a virgin (or, perhaps, sexless) goddess, and in the later period of Egyptian religion she was again considered a virgin goddess, demanding very strict abstinence from her devotees. It is at this period, apparently, that the birthday of Horus was annually celebrated, about December 25th, in the temples. As both Macrobius and the Christian writer [of the "Paschal Chronicle"] say, a figure of Horus as a baby was laid in a manger, in a scenic reconstruction of a stable, and a statue of Isis was placed beside it. Horus was, in a sense, the Savior of mankind. He was their avenger against the powers of darkness; he was the light of the world. His birth-festival was a real Christmas before Christ." Now I don't have Macrobius on hand. Can anyone look in this? I do have the Chronicon Pascale, tho the English translation by Whitby and Whitby only starts in 284 AD and runs up to 628 AD. But the materials given make it unclear just where this supposed reference might be. The index doesn't mention Horus, or Isis. Perhaps a Greek text is available of the whole work somewhere on Google books. But all this comes down to is the unsubstantiated word of this Joseph McCabe; and that isn't good enough for me, at any rate. All the best, Roger Pearse |
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04-04-2008, 08:19 AM | #40 |
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Dindorf's two volume 1832 edition of the Chronicon Pascale (described by Whitby as sound) is linked from here: http://www.luc.edu/faculty/mhooker/g...nity.html#CSHB
Vol 1: http://books.google.com/books?id=N3A...schale#PPP5,M1 Vol 2: http://books.google.com/books?id=jnA...men+II#PPP5,M1 |
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