GakuseiDon

I discussed this with a student of Egyptology, and there IS a word like "KRST" (maybe KrST, or some other uppercase/lowercase combination). It was found written on a memorial, but had nothing to do with Horus. IIRC it meant something like "good". That may have been the basis of the (mis)information.

Evoken

Yes Christmas is Pagan and was adopted to try and attract pagans into the new religion, same with the change of Jesus birth into December 25. But the date was used for its significance and it didn't belong to an specific diety.

Same case with Halloween, it was first practiced by the Druids.

As for Easter, there is a difference. To the Jews it was Pascha(Greek for Easter), they celebrated it in commemoration of their exodus from Egypt. Later it became the same Easter but representing the death/ressurection of Christ. The pagans specially those who revered the Ishtar the goddess of fertility also celebrated it and used egg to represent the cycle of vegetation. So in conclusion I think that Easter was paganized later by Christians in an effort to try and separate themselves from the Jews. The same happened when Christians moved their sacred day from Saturday to Sunday, which was the day that was used by the followers of Mithras and other pagan cults.

So, like I said in my previous posts, I know and admit that Christianity is a mystery religion but what I aim to do is to find what the REAL influence was. Also the same thing happened the otherway around with Pagans borrowing from Christianity. It was a highly competitive culture so 'borrowing' between religions was to be spected.

There are many things that I will point out in other posts. I am having to writte everything from memory because the forum where I was discussing it was deleted and all the info I posted there was lost.

fallingblood

IAsimisI- I think you are offering some great arguements and I have learned some things through this.

I have a question though, if these religions were borrowing from each other, how can know what the original beliefs our of each religion? Or are they lost?

Biff the unclean

It belonged to Mithra

Wrong, the Greek name for Easter is Aphrodite. The day commerates the Goddess Easter bringing the demigod Adonis back to life after he had been dead for three days.

The real influence was gaining power. What other reason is there to cobble together a religion out of bits and pieces of other religions?

Name, and back up, a single instance of this happening before Santarea.

dado

"Greek for Easter" is a KJV fantasy.

Pascha (greek) -> Pesach (hebrew) -> Passover (english)

Evoken

Actually there were many different names given to the goddess, each of the cults celebrated easter.

What is this influence you call real?

Also like I said, Christianity was not "built" overnight by bits and pieces of other religions and the main reference for the development of the Christian doctrine is Jewish specially the Greek translation of the Old Testament..The Septuagint. The pagan influence is there but it happened as a cultural phenomenon just like the influence of Hellenism over Judaism not as some sort of conspiracy. Christianity is a jewish adaptation of the greek mysteries not a collage of pagan mythologies.

Hehe..I was not affirming or accusing an specifict cult. I just said that it was a very competitive atmosphere back in the day.

GakuseiDon

Name, and backup, your source for that information. AFAICS, Aphrodite turns Adonis's blood into a flower as he laid dying. So no bringing him back to life and no three days, either.

Source from here

Synopsis from here

Biff the unclean

Go to Encyclopeda Mythica at http://www.pantheon.org/areas/mythol.../articles.html
which is where I copied these sections from

Once the child was born Aphrodite was so moved by his beauty that she sheltered him and entrusted him to Persephone. She was also taken by his beauty and refused to give him back.

The dispute between the two goddesses, in one version, was settled by Zeus; in others it was settled by Calliope on Zeus' behalf. The decision was that Adonis was to spend one-third of every year with each goddess and the last third wherever he chose. He always chose to spend two-thirds of the year with Aphrodite.

<snip>
The story of Adonis, despite its variants, is certainly another example of the dying vegetation god (see: Tammuz). The close association with Aphrodite or Persephone also brings his myth into line with the many other mated couples, where the male partener dies and is reborn, that is spread across North Africa and the Near East.

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Tammuz
The Akkadian vegetation-god, counterpart of the Sumerian Damuzi and the symbol of death and rebirth in nature. He is the son of Ea and husband of Ishtar. Each year he dies in the hot summer (in the month tammus, June/July) and his soul is taken by the Gallu demons to the underworld. Woe and desolation fall upon the earth, and Ishtar leads the world in lamentation. She then descends to the nether world, ruled by Ereshkigal, and after many trials succeeds in bringing him back, as a result of which fertility and joy return to the earth. In Syria he was identified with Adonis.
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Ishtar is a slight variation of Easter.
The dead for three days is not covered here, you'll need Joseph Campbell for that. It is 3 days because that is the amount of time the moon stays new.
Persephone as I'm sure you remember, is the Queen of the underworld.

GakuseiDon

OK, thanks.

ichabod crane

Interesting posts. No question there are parallels between Christianity and paganism. Why this should be particularly suprising I don't know.

But I do have these comments, as some of your points are, I think, flawed:

The Biblical account does not state the date of the birth but it is universally admitted by scholars that it couldn't have been December 25th; shepherds were not in the fields in Palestine at that time in the year. The number of shepherds is also not stated. The idea that Jesus was born in a cave also has no Biblical support; it comes from an apocryphal work called the Protoevangelium of James.

Jesus did not baptize (John 4:2) and it is highly questionable whether there is any connection between his statements about being "born again" (gennethe anothen, which can also be translated "born from above", see the NRSV for example, John 3:3) and baptism. "Born of water" was a common Pharisaic phrase referring to natural birth, for obvious reasons; see parallel between first and second births in verse 4 and born of water and born of spirit in verse 5.

But you're going to have to do some explaining here, because the story of Jesus riding into town on a donkey actually relates to Zec. 9:9. Since dates for the book of Zechariah range from the 6th to the 2nd centuries BC, you would have to show a pagan influence on Jewish thought during that time.

According to the gospel accounts, Jesus was crucified at Passover, not Easter. Easter is a later development and the date of Easter does not correspond with Passover. Similarly to the point above, there are obvious allusions in the gospel accounts of Jesus' death to the Passover, so you'd have to show how pagan thought influenced the Jewish passover.

The fundamental problem that your thesis has is that there are so many extensive allusions to the Old Testament in the account of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. So you have to show why and how the Old Testament accounts parallel the pagan accounts. Lest I be misunderstood, I'm not arguing that these were fulfilled prophecies or anything like that. It could be that the early church built the story of Jesus around the Old Testament. I'm also not arguing that they necessarily interpreted the Old Testament correctly; that's not the point. The point is that in there own self-understanding of things, they saw Jesus in the Old Testament.