TCPHumanist

Indeed. In fact, by the specific wording used it's very possible that he got the information from "Zeitgeist".

You forgot the parts where Jesus waxes lyrical about hell. I especially love the ending of one such parable: "Tie his hands and feet and throw him into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Brings a tear to my eye, that one...

Roger Pearse

Mitra and Mithras (both masculine deities) are different from each other. The former is an ancient Persian deity, about whom no-one online ever seems to know much.

The latter is a Roman cult, first evidenced in the archaeology ca. 80 AD, first mention in the literature is in Plutarch (early 2nd century) who tells us that the Cilician pirates at the time of Pompey (68 BC) worshipped Mithras.

Certain similarities of ritual with Christianity are remarked on by Justin Martyr and Tertullian. Here are all the ancient literary testimonies on Mithras.

Mithras was born from a rock, not a virgin. There is no association of Mithras with 25 Dec.; that is Sol Invictus, the late Roman state sun cult. He did not have 12 disciples; that is a mistake from a relief of Mithras surrounded by 12 signs -- the zodiac. As a deity, of course, he did not die. The association with Sunday is often asserted, but I am not sure on what grounds.

So you see that, regardless of Christianity, the raw facts about these pagan myths are not right.

All this stuff that you've seen derives from Kersey Graves, whose book is on II and carries a health warning.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

premjan

Krishna wasn't born of a virgin - he was the eighth child of Vasudeva and Devaki. He wasn't crucified - he died of an arrow in the heel from a sniper like Achilles. Krishna's birthday (Janmaashtami) is celebrated in August / September and not in December.

premjan

Oh and Krishna's star is Rohini (Aldebaran). I have no idea what it means for a star to be in the "east". Also Krishna claimed (in the Bhagavad Gita) he would be reincarnated whenever evil was ascendant in the world. But Hindus don't believe in resurrection of the body at all, only reincarnation of the spirit. He did perform a number of miracles according to popular myth.

Rick Sumner

That's probably a good choice. Though you got less of a hammering than I thought you would. Seeing these claims so much seems to have dulled the outrage that used to manifest when they were presented.

To add some more to the list of factual errors:

Dionysius wasn't crucified, he was ripped apart by the titans (hence tearing apart the faun in Euripides' The Bacchae).

Attis wasn't crucified, he was castrated (it's why Cybele's devotees did likewise). His "resurrection" was his transformation to the pine tree. I suppose you could call that a parallel, so long as you omitted every detail.

Mithras had two attendants (Cautes and Cautopates). He didn't have any "disciples." Cautes usually holds a torch aloft, while Cautopates holds one low, perhaps indicating sunrise and sunset (or perhaps indicating something else entirely--not enough survives to be certain).

I wouldn't pull that violin out just yet.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

lpetrich

Others here have pointed out many of the errors in Atheist_Forever's original post, and I will point out some more.

First, Horus has a falcon's head, not an owl's head.

And AF indulged in a common sort of pseudo-linguistics; he/she ought to have done a better investigation of the origin of those words.

"Horizon", like many technical words, originally comes from Greek, where it was horizôn (kuklos), "limiting (circle)", from horizein, "to limit", in turn from horos, boundary (The American Heritage Dictionary).

"Sunset" is from "sun" + "set" (the verb); the latter came from Old English settan, which originally meant "to cause to sit, to place". The word "sit" itself comes form Old English sittan. And both words are derived further from Indo-European *sed-, which has numerous other descendants, including some Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Welsh, and Old Irish words that have found their way into English.

And all this action is a long way from Egypt; the Egyptian language is in the Afro-Asiatic family, which also includes the semitic family.


And having criticized AF, I will now criticize some of his critics. There are many similarities between Jesus Christ's biography and the biographies of several gods and legendary heroes, but the similarities are more in a matter of broad outline than in specific details like how the hero died. JC is the only one who got crucified, as far as I know. But JC fits Lord Raglan's Mythic Hero profile remarkably well, scoring around 19 or so out of 22.

gstafleu

Not a story but myth, which is a special kind of story. If you are interested in this you should read up on the field of comparative mythology. A good plave to start is The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.

Gerard Stafleu

Hex

One of the neat things about that score is that Lord Raglan explicitly left JC out of the data he used ...

From: Lord_Raglan_(author)

andrewcriddle

Hi Roger

from your excellent web page
Statius (writing c 90 CE) is a few years earlier than Plutarch.

Andrew Criddle

figuer

It is fitting to mention that the relevant date is not "December 25" per se, but the winter solstice (which now falls December 21-22, due to calendar reforms).