J-D

On this particular point, you might find interesting the explanation in this post from another thread about one way texts can get altered without intentional deceit.

Koyaanisqatsi

Beyond the fact that they aren't really parallel any more than there are actually bunnies in clouds when you look at them long enough, are you equally worried about the parallels between, say, Mithras and Jesus? Or between the Scorsese movie After Hours and "the Castle" by Kafka? Or stories about Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman and Grendel from Beowulf?

Partially, but also remember, you're dealing with cult mythology, not factual, historical reality. The Earth wasn't created before the Sun and there's no such thing as talking snakes, talking burning bushes, demons and devils and gods for that matter. Everything in the Bible is the result of human imagination at the very least, if not human manipulation at the very worst.

At no point is there any claim in any of the Bible that a god actually wrote anything; the best you have is a claim that a god "inspired" it or "breathed" it or whatever, so remove all the pomp and circumstance and all you've got is a bunch of cult stories written by cult members for other cult members, not historically true accounts of actual events written by dispassionate, non-biased historians.

As Clouseau keeps pointing out, these were stories (morality instructions) told around the dinnertable/bonfire designed to instruct primarily desert nomads on how to eat, fuck, shit, shave and essentially remain under the control of their leaders, both mentally and financially (hence the utterly ludicrous command to sacrifice the best breeding stock or best seed, which is how one's wealth was measured).

There's a reason why everyone in the Bible keeps referring to "the Law" and that's because that's all the Bible actually is (well, the OT, anyway); a book of social laws.

The way they enforce those laws is to make up a great big scary invisible boogeyman in the sky who knows all and sees all and whose vengeance is beyond comprehension in its swiftness and cruelness.

The knife is used to slaughter the sacrifice; the nails are used to hammer the criminal to the crucifix.

How are those "parallel" in any significant way, other than there's metal involved in both?

The wood is being carried by Isaac to burn the sacrifice (which he doesn't know is supposed to be him and he's walking into an ambush); the crucifix is being carried by Jesus to hang himself upon knowing that he is going to be sacrificed.

Isaac is not sacrificed to God because it is not necessary and Jesus is killed by the Romans, which later cult members claim is a necessary sacrifice to God, even though those same cult members also claim that Jesus is God.

How are those "parallel" in any significant way, other than there's wood involved in both?

No, it's not. They didn't burn the crosses. You're thinking of 1960's Alabama, not first century Jerusalem.

Well, according to the NT; all have sinned but Jesus (though an argument could be made that when he supposedly said, "Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone" Jesus should have then cast a stone, but did not), so, again, if that's the case and Jesus is Isaac, then the Jesus/Isaac/Savior/Messiah "event" has already occurred a thouand years prior and there would therefore be absolutely no need to repeat it (regardless of the fact that there is no need to do it the first time, considering God's all powerful, all forgiving, all loving, all nude, all night....sorry).

In short, what you've got is a story about an ambush human sacrifice that God stops and an implausible story about Romans inexplicably killing a man they've declared innocent of committing any Roman crime, because "the Jews" want them to kill him.

This then becomes a "sacrificial" story in later centuries through ridiculous apologetics and inapplicable stretches of imagination.

Neither. All you've "found out" is that there is metal and wood involved in a burnt animal sacrifice and there is metal and wood involved in nailing a criminal to a crucifix.

:huh:

Hardly compelling and not at all "parallel."

Koyaanisqatsi

How do you figure? All it did for him is reveal he's not just a sociopathic murderer who hears voices and believes them to be that of a god telling him to murder his own son, but that he's guilty of filicide.

He didn't stop himself; the voice inside his head did, supposedly.

I should imagine that the "best" thing that ever happened to Jesus was that he is God....but...you know....why complicate matters?

And there's the Chili we know and love, so I'll leave it in the quagmire of metaphor, since that's, you know, myth.

Chili

Exactly, there was no ax and there was no body. Yet the firstborn was spared and the ego died, was buried and rose again.

"When the ego raptures that which remains is in heaven." (hint, those so called christians have everything just backwards).

Koyaanisqatsi

Of course they do.

Chili

I think it is funny, yet they are willing to die for it.

andy5

Well I'm sorry I've been taking all this out on you. When you've been raised with a very specific interpretation of the Bible and a deep seated fear of Hell, you tend to give anything at all in the Bible that could possible be divinely inspired, especially in my case where I can now no longer sensibly believe much of the rest of it, the benefit of a doubt. Again, I said sensibly believe, and I guess to believe this you are not sensible, which the Christians would probably argue is right, or something like that. Well anyway, I don't know if I can ever be able to shake it off, much as I would like to-if there were actually a part in the New Testament where they specifically referred in scripture to these parallels, why then it would be obvious that they could have made it up based on it. But because it's not in one of the approved gospels, although it's possible it's a midrashic interpretation of it, down to someone coming up with the idea of Jesus being sinless and his sacrifice cleansing our sins, it's like you just can't really know for sure. And therein lies the problem.

The Evil One

Neither. You are suffering from confirmation bias. That is, even though you are well aware that there are both similarities and disimilarities between the stories, you are giving more weight to the similarities; you are also going out of your way to manufacture similarities that aren't there in the text.

Namely:

"it's also possible they burned the cross "

"maybe he hadn't sinned "

"Ishmael he could be like the Devil "

"perhaps at some point in his life, Isaac may have been "

POSSIBLE, MAYBE, COULD BE, PERHAPS, MAY HAVE BEEN.

But in fact there is no evidence of any of these parallel-strengthening details. You have basically made them up to bolster the parallel.

Why are you letting parallels that aren't there in the text worry you?


Clearly so. In your case, the benefit of the doubt would seem to extend to "making up new facts to support it".

You appear to be attempting to decide between two choices:

(1) the parallel is there and it's true because it was put there by God
(2) the parallel is there but it's not true because the Jesus part was made up by early Christians

But this is a false dilemma, as there is a third option

(3) the parallel isn't there to start with.

which seems to me to be much more likely.

Koyaanisqatsi

Being a skeptic means never having to say you're sorry .

We've all been there. Well, most, anyway. It took me sixteen years to deprogram out of the cult (Presbyterian wing).

Yes, because "god made wisdom foolish" and "the lord moves in mysterious ways" and "who are you to know the mysteries of life" and all the other patently absurd (and rather obvious, once you're out of the cult) propaganda phrases employed to keep sheep....well....sheep.

Don't sweat it. It's the most powerful propaganda machine on the planet and has had thouands of years of brutal implementation and honing at its disposal.

Think of it this way; you've got an existing set of myths. Let's call that collection of cult mythology "the Old Testament." You've decided you want to challenge the authority of that OT; to challenge the orthodoxy of the keepers of the OT. What would it take to do that?

The only primary character in the OT that would allow any sort of challenge would be a messiah; an Elijah. Elijah would have to come in order for anything to be changed about the OT (and consequently the followers of the OT, aka, the Jews).

IOW, in order to change/challenge the Jewish orthodoxy in first century C.E. Jeruselam, you'd need to have the equivalent of (if not the actual) Elijah/Mashiah.

Actually, you know what? I'm getting way ahead of where you are in your deprogramming. Try and think in terms of the Bible being the Koran (which it is) or the Mormon Bible. You would have no trouble at all talking about the ridiculous fictional story that a Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon into English by divine inspiration from golden plates that he received from the angel Moroni (left behind by the ancient prophets and followers of Jesus Christ who lived in the Americas from approximately 600 B.C. to A.D. 421) that basically instructed mankind to engage in polygamy.

Clearly, Joseph Smith was a charlatan (or, at best, a schizophrenic).

Well, all religions are shams. They have to be, because there are no such things as demons and gods and hell and the like. It's all bullshit written by men to control other men.

So, if you start with the correct perspective (the very one all cults demand first and foremost that you do not start with, of course, which should be the biggest clue) you see that anyone intent on writing mythology is going to take whatever they want from previous myths and try to force it to fit their current myth.

So, you've got some people who think David Koresh is a messiah (there are many messiahs, after all) for example and what happens from that starting perspective? His followers look for every messianic comparison they can find to support the belief that he's a messiah.

See what I mean? It's the standard operating procedure for all cults to start with a conclusion and then work to find everything that supports that conclusion.

But that's not the way to do things. The way to do things is to start with an assertion, then lay out all the evidence to support that assertion and then based on the strenght of the evidence form a conclusion.

Cults switch all that around and that's why they're all false. Necessarily so. You can't start with a conclusion and then work backwards, because they minute you do is the minute you're engaging in fraud.

Lugubert

That's a principle that helped me. I got interested in the religions of India, and thought that them having gods coming down to Earth, or us having more lives after death was too ridiculous, however charming.

When getting into Religious studies, I had to look at my beliefs in a way that I could defend. The God avatar Jesus, at least one more life...

Not the only reasons I left the sheep fold, but great contributing factors.