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Old 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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Old 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:
Osiris was a real god, whether or not he was from beginning a human being. He ws no proper vegetation god but was involved with the major seasonal changes in nature. This was manifested in rite. He both died and rose. But, and this is important, he rose to continue life in the Netherworld, and the general connotations are that he was a god of the dead.
At the end of a very detailed account of the various near east dying and rising gods, the writer compares these stories to that of Jesus, but concludes that they were unrelated because:

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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Old 04-04-2008, 02:19 AM   #33
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All I was pointing out was that many Christian "ideals" did not originate with Christianity which tends to help add doubt about the "holy word of god".
If the Christian religion is true and the universe is and always has been as they say, these ideas ought to have some existence before AD 30, surely?
As a believer, this sort of explanation makes sense, but if you have a different paradigm, this idea seems silly. Sort of reminds me of the idea that God (or was it Slartibartfast) planted the fossils to give the world the appearance of age.
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Old 04-04-2008, 03:47 AM   #34
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No indeed. Although it would probably be sound to verify that whatever story we have heard about Horus is found in a normal encyclopedia of mythology entry on the god; and to make sure that we aren't talking trivia -- the sort of trivia whereby some people argue that pyramids in Egypt plus pyramids in Mexico 'proves' contact, instead of the fact that people with bricks will pile them up in the same way because of gravity,
I can't help but being a little insulted. I have loved and studied the ancient Egyptians since I was six years old.
Good for you. Me too!

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?

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Set apart from the myths are the ancient statues depicted Isis and Horus and they are very similar to many portraits of the the virgin and baby jesus.
Um, well, won't any mother-and-child image have certain substantial similarities?

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:
While I was just looking for a good picture I have come across several sites that claim that Horus and Jesus are in fact the same??? Now THAT is insane...
Yes, I've seen this stuff -- indeed I was wondering if I was about to see it again, which is why I made a plea for sources.

Quote:
Is it not easier (in my mind more believable) to say that the writers of the bible borrowed the story from the Egyptians, or any other religion with a similar story? Isis was still a popular cult up until the reign of Constantine, I'm sure the myth was well known.
Indeed; but because it could have happened -- ignoring for the moment the vitriolic hostility of Christians to paganism -- is not enough. We have to show, surely, that it *did* happen?

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It is also perfectly logical to assume that the virgin birth of Horus was "borrowed" from an earlier story.
Um, what virgin birth of Horus? Come, sir, if Osiris is noted for anything in the iconography it's his, um, "readiness for action"!

All the best,

Roger Pearse
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Old 04-04-2008, 03:49 AM   #35
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Originally Posted by Toto View Post
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.
I don't know who is supposed to believe this, or why we should agree with them, tho. If the argument is about iconography, of course, that's rather different.

All the best,

Roger Pearse
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Old 04-04-2008, 05:31 AM   #36
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Originally Posted by squiz View Post
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:
Osiris was a real god, whether or not he was from beginning a human being. He ws no proper vegetation god but was involved with the major seasonal changes in nature. This was manifested in rite. He both died and rose. But, and this is important, he rose to continue life in the Netherworld, and the general connotations are that he was a god of the dead.
At the end of a very detailed account of the various near east dying and rising gods, the writer compares these stories to that of Jesus, but concludes that they were unrelated because:

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.
....and very likely were used.

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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Old 04-04-2008, 06:16 AM   #37
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Originally Posted by Roger Pearse View Post

Um, what virgin birth of Horus? Come, sir, if Osiris is noted for anything in the iconography it's his, um, "readiness for action"!

All the best,

Roger Pearse
I have to disagree. Yes there are many, many depictions of Osiris "ready for action". I view this more as an artistic reference to the "fertility" aspect of his character. However, in every version of the myth I have ever read Isis never found his penis. Osiris is also depicted with green skin, does this mean anything? Was he an alien? (rhetorical question)

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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Old 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.
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Old 04-04-2008, 08:12 AM   #39
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sitamun View Post
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Originally Posted by Roger Pearse View Post

Um, what virgin birth of Horus? Come, sir, if Osiris is noted for anything in the iconography it's his, um, "readiness for action"!
I have to disagree. Yes there are many, many depictions of Osiris "ready for action". I view this more as an artistic reference to the "fertility" aspect of his character.

However, in every version of the myth I have ever read Isis never found his penis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horus
Isis fashioned a golden phallus thus Horus...
Um. Just incidentally, wikipedia isn't source we can really rely on, you know.

Quote:
Isis conceived Horus after the death the Osiris, but prior to his dismemberment.

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?)
Not really the point. The question is where is this virgin birth stuff? Is it asserted that Osiris and Isis never got it together before Osiris had his run-in with the Inland Revenue? (or the ancient equivalent thereof).

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:
**I have never said that the Egyptian version of a "virgin birth" is the ultimate original version....
Ah, one thing at a time, tho. We have yet to determine that the ancient Egyptians believed that Horus was the product of a virgin birth. If they did, we can only know this if they said so somewhere. Do we know of any evidence whatsoever that such a statement ever existed? I don't think we do, you see.

Quote:
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.
None of this, in fact, bears on the question of whether Christianity is true or false. But I think it's most interesting to see this allegation about the virgin birth of Horus. Can we trace where it comes from?

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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Old 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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