Eazy

Magical number? I know for a fact that right now you are back-pedaling from "Mithras had 12 disciples" to "12 is a magic number", just so that you can salvage anything that was left from that "parallel". Of all the Mithraism sites, I've never come across one saying "12 is a magic number". They've explicitly said that "Mithras had 12 disciples". This "parallel" is of your own creation.

Toto

<mod hat on> Please keep the rhetoric down.

IamMoose - unfortunately, there is a lot of bad information out on the web on this issue, so it is important to examine your sources. Look at Celsus' links. I suspect that there is a case to be made for some parallels, but many of them have been overstated, which tends to discredit the whole enterprise.

Easy - you may also need to examine your sources. Please do not use the word "myther" as an insult if you wish to keep the discussion on a higher plane. Earl Doherty of the Jesus Puzzle site is not in the same class as Acharya S - he cites sources. The tectonics site that you relied on is not always a reputable site, due to the high level of abuse and extreme bias on the part of JP Holding.

Eazy

..and it shouldn't even matter, really. It's the content that matters. If he dismisses something simply because it is apologetics then that's pretty sad. Coupled with the fact that he probably reads atheist apologetics, too. The content of a paper or article should be judged. Not pre-judged.

Eazy

Sorry about that.

Really? I've heard differently. Does he do it for the Jesus puzzle book?

Yes, I know J. P. Holding is a bit hot under the collar, but other than that I think he's quite thoroughly researched and I don't find anything else wrong with him. I think his trash talking is probably just a defense mechanism.

Do you know any specific incidents where he's been called out for bad facts, or blatantly fuzzy logic?

Vorkosigan

The Jesus Puzzle has a seven page bib. Perhaps you should read the book, eh?

<sits down with bag of popcorn and beer>

Vorkosigan

Celsus

Yes. He's utterly ignorant on anything to do with biblical archaeology. His grasp of the Pentateuch (or the OT for that matter) is pretty shoddy too. He called me arrogant for pointing this out to him. *chortle* Finally, he's a disciple of Glen Miller, who's got some pretty poor arguments out there.

Joel

Celsus

Honestly Biff, if you're still here, please read the two links I provided before embarassing yourself further. While there were certainly syncretistic tendencies in all religions of the ANE and Mediterranean, they were not identical metaphorically or functionally, nor were they complete borrowings of one from the other. The entire dying-rising-suffering-god category is now adrift on the sea of discarded scholarship.

Joel

Toto

There's a web page full of them here and here. [Turkel is Holding's real name.] The whole website tektonics.com is devoted to bashing Holding.

Holding has a long running contention with Farrel Till, who publishes the Skeptical Review which is now housed on the II site. You can search for Holding or Turkel on the II site (go to the home page and use the google base search engine in the upper right hand corner).

I have read some recent essays on Holding's site that appear to be more reasonabe. And he does tend to remove material from his site if he finds a problem in it. But you should not accept anything he says without independent confirmation.

IamMoose

It's very difficult as a layman to know which sources to trust and which not... I am the first to admit that I am no scholar, or at least on this subject! But if I google Mithraism, the majority of sites that I get - not that I've searched all of them, obviously - indicate a link with Christianity. Is it possible that all this sites are wrong, and/or written with malicious intent? Smoke and fire comes to mind.

Celsus

Firstly, you need to remember that websites are very good at propagating myths that people want to believe. Up till the 1960s, the likes of Cumont, Reitzenstein, Frazer, Gaster, and others who did ascribe the parallels you noted held sway. This has been overturned in more recent years in both fields of Mesopotamian and classical studies (although criticisms to their approaches appeared during their own time).

Joel