Originally Posted by stuart shepherd

PFC wrote........
I used to have a book on my hard drive about "Twelve Crucified Messiahs"
Many of you probably also saw the book as it was being promoted several years ago. The point is that the Jesus story was one of many crucified Messiah fables from antiquity.
Jesus was not unique.

Stuart Shepherd

Originally Posted by Toto

:banghead:

It's 16 Crucified Saviors, and please forget you ever saw it. Read Richard Carrier's assessment here.

Originally Posted by Toto

It's 16 Crucified Saviors, and please forget you ever saw it. Read Richard Carrier's assessment here.

Originally Posted by Richard Carrier

Although I have not exhaustively investigated this matter, I have confirmed only two real "resurrected" deities with some uncanny similarity to Jesus which are actually reported before Christian times, Zalmoxis and Inanna, neither of which is mentioned by Graves or John G. Jackson (another Gravesian author--though both mention Tammuz, for whom Inanna was mistaken in their day). This is apart from the obvious pre-Christian myths of Demeter, Dionysos, Persephone, Castor and Pollux, Isis and Osiris, and Cybele and Attis, which do indeed carry a theme of metaphorical resurrection, usually in the terms of a return or escape from the Underworld, explaining the shifting seasons. But these myths are not quite the same thing as a pre-Christian passion story. It only goes to show the pervasiveness in antiquity of an agricultural resurrection theme, and the Jesus story has more to it than that, although the cultural influence can certainly be acknowledged.

The only pre-Christian man to be buried and resurrected and deified in his own lifetime, that I know of, is the Thracian god Zalmoxis (also called Salmoxis or Gebele'izis), who is described in the mid-5th-century B.C.E. by Herodotus (4.94-96), and also mentioned in Plato's Charmides (156d-158b) in the early-4th-century B.C.E. According to the hostile account of Greek informants, Zalmoxis buried himself alive, telling his followers he would be resurrected in three years, but he merely resided in a hidden dwelling all that time. His inevitable "resurrection" led to his deification, and a religion surrounding him, which preached heavenly immortality for believers, persisted for centuries.

The only case, that I know, of a pre-Christian god actually being crucified and then resurrected is Inanna (also known as Ishtar), a Sumerian goddess whose crucifixion, resurrection and escape from the underworld is told in cuneiform tablets inscribed c. 1500 B.C.E., attesting to a very old tradition. The best account and translation of the text is to be found in Samuel Kramer's History Begins at Sumer, pp. 154ff., but be sure to use the third revised edition (1981), since the text was significantly revised after new discoveries were made. For instance, the tablet was once believed to describe the resurrection of Inanna's lover, Tammuz (also known as Dumuzi). Graves thus mistakenly lists Tammuz as one of his "Sixteen Crucified Saviors." Of course, Graves cannot be discredited for this particular error, since in his day scholars still thought the tablet referred to that god (Kramer explains how this mistake happened).

Originally Posted by punkforchrist

First of all, we are not concerned with issues related to Biblical Inerrancy. Assuming for the sake of argument that the Gospels contain some contradictions does not in any way undermine the historical core of evidence in favor of Jesus’ bodily resurrection. After all, no one believes that John Alden’s biography of George Washington must be infallible in every detail in order to accept the basic tenets of Alden’s testimony. Likewise, what the New Testament teaches about the events surrounding the resurrection of Jesus do not have to be infallible in order for us to salvage a number of important facts.