Butters

Just a convient excuse huh? We know from the Church's own admission that they destroyed everything written that they disagreed with. Why do you think you have no early surviving copies of the N.T. ? On one hand christians claim that the church was founded by Jesus, and continued by Paul, and Peter. That Christianity spread extremely rapidly, spreading in just a few years. That the Gospels were written soon after the death of Jesus, and circulated rapidly and freely. On the other hand, no originals exist, no copies exist earlier than late 2nd century. we know the Catholic Church destroyed many manuscripts they didn't agree with, by their own admission. And you are ignoring the fact that after 2 thousand years of revision, the gospel stories still don't agree exactly. (although Christians are stll working on this, for example the N.I.V.)



Bullshit! Martyr and others ADMITTED that Christianity was similar to the Pagan religions! Not having the luxury of a wide seperation of time, they could not deny it. How could a "true" religion have so much in common with ones that are just made up? Unless you buy the Satan story.


So the stories are similar when convient for Christians, and different when not, I get it.

Metacrock

Meta=> O they did hU? Then how come I have a copy of PLato? How come I have the Homeric hymns? If they destroyed it, how do you know that was in it?

that's just bullshit! show me the admition? You haven't read that. You just accept it because sketpics say it all the time. Show me text. show me where the so called "admision" is found!





Why do you think you have no early surviving copies of the N.T. ?



Meta => why would they destroy copies of the NT? How do you know they did?

we don't have them because they are hard to preserve.



Meta=> WEll I can prove that Plato was a chirisan. yea, cause I dont have anything that says that. So tha proves his enemies must have destroyed it!'

can't you see that argument from silence isn't proof of anything?Can't you see how absurd it is to use lack of evidence as proof of something? There are many reasons why we don't have early copoies. One of them is because when the material was incorporated into new forms, the old copies were not copied anymore. That's praboably why there's no wirtten Q source, if there was one. Another reason is because the really early stuff was oral tradition. The things we do have are usually preserved in jars and sealed, and exist only in fragments anyway. it was 2000 yearsa go you know.


Hey do you that we have no copoies of any of the Greek classics from before the middle ages. We didn't even Tacitus existed until the 11th century because people forgot about him, and one Ms was discovered from the 9th century. We have no ancient copies of his work. Does that mean his enemies destroyed them?




we know the Catholic Church destroyed many manuscripts they didn't agree with, by their own admission.


where are these admissions found? can you quote them?






Meta => You are ignoring the fact that they do agree to within 97%. There are only slight differences, very few passages with major disagreements. Most are just errors in spelling or syntax, some with material out of place, or copy mistakes.


look how off topic this thread is. you guys have nothing to say, I take it proved my argument!





Bullshit! Martyr and others ADMITTED that Christianity was similar to the Pagan religions! Not having the luxury of a wide seperation of time, they could not deny it. How could a "true" religion have so much in common with ones that are just made up? Unless you buy the Satan story.




So the stories are similar when convient for Christians, and different when not, I get it. [/B][/QUOTE]

Infidelettante

Originally posted by Metacrock
You are ignoring the fact that they do agree to within 97%. There are only slight differences, very few passages with major disagreements. Most are just errors in spelling or syntax, some with material out of place, or copy mistakes.

quote:Metacrock
The the doctrine of verbal plenary inspiration didn't exsit then, so the idea of barrowing didn't have the same onus it does to you.

It has been so very long but I will take a shot at "verbal plenary". If I recall it is the doctrine that God inspired the very words we find in scripture [verbal] and thus scripture is completely and totaly inspired there being none of it not spoken by God [plenary]. How did I do Metacrock?

Now explain the 3% that isn't verbal or plenary. And while you are at it where did you get the 97% figure because I think that may be a little high. Just a little.

And just how few major disagreements do you know about and why have you kept them to yourself. I should think you would want to get those out of the way so we don't have to deal with them over and over.

JT

Metacrock

Meta =>pretty good.



Meta => I think you may be confused. I am opposed to verbal plenary inspiration.

Here is a link to my theory of inspiration: dialectical retrieval.


http://www.geocities.com/metacrock20...Models_rev.htm





Meta => I don't worry about that. I don't do things that way. If the Bible is wrong about facts or about science or historical matters or whatever, it doesn't matter to me. I think it's right about many things, the general outline of history. But the most important thing is what it tells us about relationship with the divine, not dazzeling puzzells and little proofs that it's a memo form god, because its not a memo. It's a recored written by people who experinced God; and their record may or may not have flaws. We can learn from it either way.


I don't think it's important if there are some mistakes. It matters what they are. I think a core of historicity is important, and that's why the unianimity of text matters, but not in the way the fundies think it does.

The major thing you want to hear in terms of "mistakes" would be the nature of its redaction, the evidence of the Gospels being compiled form previous documents. But to me that is no big deal.

JERDOG

OK, I finaly made it to the library today and this is what I found with just fourty five minutes of reading. I wonder how many more simularities I would find If I did all out research?

Buddah was born of a virgin.

Adonis died and was reborn

Cybele was a healer and offered immorality to her devottes.

Asclepius healed the sick and raised the dead.

Poseidon rode his charit over water.

Dionysos turned water into wine.

Mithras Inscriptions in a Mithraeum (temple of Mithras) in Rome reads: "reborn and created for delights," and "you have saved us by the shedding of eternal blood."

The second century Christian Justin Martyr says of Jesus.
"He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you believe of Perseus."

Multiple stories of water baptisims and water cleansings.

Multiple stories were read of burned animal fat to the gods.

Multiple stories of sharing meals with gods was also read.

It's obvious to me that the first Christians took the basic ideas of their culture and adapted them to their new faith. Like all the ancient Pagans, they built a new religion out of old parts.

Infinity Lover

Wouldn't it be horrible if the new testament had to inspire people on it's own merrits, without the 'absolute truth approved by God' sticker?
Could you imagine that piece of writing making it past crummy read without those credentials?

JGL53

I'm no biblical scholar, but I seem to recall that in the 'jesus walking on water' story in the bible. one of the disciples (Peter?) tried to walk after jesus, his faith failed him and he began to sink, then (I think) through jesus's encouragement to 'have faith' he then was able to walk on water also.

The two common elements in each story seem to be:

Having faith = walking/riding on water

Lack of faith = sinking into the water (as expected)


Could be a coincidence - but I think someone ripped off someone else's myth.

Metacrock

ahahahaahahaha! The Posiden story was made up by a person on this board! There was no such story in Greek Mythology!!!!

Metacrock

Ok, tell us your sources? What books did you look in? See that makes a difference as I said in the original post, because people like Doherty and Freke and Ghandi are writting books speicifically to disprove christiantiy. But when you read the books by neutral scholars who don't have an ax to grind they don't show the similarities.

Buddah was born of a virgin.

Meta => that info was included in my orignal post. It's a legeond that was started after christiantiy hit India. It wasn't an original Buddhist legeond.




Adonis died and was reborn

Meta =>Dying is no big deal, everyone does it. So you can't say that's a copy. Being re-born is not the same as resurrection. He doesn't raise from the dead.

Adonis was Tamuz originally







Cybele was a healer and offered immorality to her devottes.


Meta =>So what!?? They were all healers. All ancient world cultures had healers. That's not specific enough to say it influenced copying.



Asclepius healed the sick and raised the dead.

Meta =>see above





Poseidon rode his charit over water.



Meta =>Our God don't need no stink'n chariot, mon!

Seriously, power over nature is something that all gods in all cultures had. That's not speicific enough.


Dionysos turned water into wine.


Meta =>OK now we are getting some place. Maybe the story of JC turning water to wine was a rip off. I doubt it, but maybe,[font color=red] but that doesn't prove that the whole life story of Jesus was patterened after pagan gods![/color]



Mithras Inscriptions in a Mithraeum (temple of Mithras) in Rome reads: "reborn and created for delights," and "you have saved us by the shedding of eternal blood."


Meta =>That inscription dates to after the writtings of Pual. So it could be barrowing in the other direction. ie barrowed from chrisitans.



The second century Christian Justin Martyr says of Jesus.
"He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you believe of Perseus."




Meta =>But if you read further in his discourse you find that he goes on to cancel what he said. He's trying to build common ground, but he also sticks in a uniqueness clause. Jesus was like them, but not like them. He says the virigin birth of Christ was not like the mythological Virigin births because God did not have sex with Mary, Zeus had sex with Peseus' mother (so technically she wasn't virigin)





Multiple stories of water baptisims and water cleansings.




Meta =>when do the stroies date from? Most of what we have of Mithrism is late, and copied form christians. But anytime someone gets wet they figure its a baptism. If you examine them closer you see they aren't baptismal rites at all.




Multiple stories were read of burned animal fat to the gods.




Meta =>Look, you are just going to have to face the fact that all cutlures believed in sacraficing to gods. That's just a given. you might as well say that having gods itself is a copy. not sepciific enough!





Multiple stories of sharing meals with gods was also read.

Meta =>see what i just said.






Meta =>You need a more realistic understanding of ancient world religion. It's not a copy to have gods. It's not a copy to think that your gods control nature. All people these things. Not a copy to sacrafice to them, or thin they heal people. These are universal human disires. eating with someone was univerally a sign of fellowship. None of that is evidence of copying.







2) Scholars rule out conscious borrowing

Most scholars rule out any sort of borrowing by Christianity from the mystery cults for their notions of rebirth and salvation. There may have been some linguistic influences, but the most direct would have been Hellenistic, not Persian or Egyptian.(See W. F. Flemington, The New Testament Doctrine of Baptism (London: SPCK, 1948), 76-81.)

3) Careless language and No Critical Distinctions

The main problem however is that these groups offered nothing that was really like that which Christianity offered. Rooted as it is in Jewish Messianic expectations, it is foolish to try and carry over such superficial similarities as if they are the very essence of religion. Lots of cultures can have religious meals, and abolution rites. There are merely surface things, the mere presence of such rituals tells us nothing about the ideas of the group. Christian baptism offers an image of solidarity with the savior who sacrificed his life for us. The notion of rebirth is centered in that concept, rising to walk in newness of life. Jesus was reinvigorated, he did not merely mimic life, he took on a new life, robust and glorified but every bit like the one he had before, flesh and blood vitality. None of these pagan myths offer that sort of resurrection, nor do they offer the sort of union with God upon which Christianity bases its view of salvation.



Reinhold Neibuhr (Greatest American Theologian)

http://www.christiananswers.net/summit/nash2.html

The page is titled: "Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?"

"Many alleged similarities between Christianity and the mysteries are either greatly exaggerated or fabricated. Scholars often describe pagan rituals in language they borrow from Christianity. The careless use of language could lead one to speak of a "Last Supper" in Mithraism or a "baptism" in the cult of Isis. It is inexcusable nonsense to take the word "savior" with all of its New Testament connotations and apply it to Osiris or Attis as though they were savior-gods in any similar sense."


4) Nash Summarizes differences in Jesus and Pagan "Saviors"


Was The New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions

by Ronald Nash

from the Christian Research Journal, Winter 1994, p 8

Elliot Miller Editor-in-Chief

http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources...b/crjo169a.html



(1) None of the so-called savior-gods died for someone else. The notion of the Son of God dying in place of His creatures is unique to Christianity.[13]
(2) Only Jesus died for sin. As Gunter Wagner observes, to none of the pagan gods "has the intention of helping men been attributed. The sort of death that they died is quite different (hunting accident, self-emasculation, etc.)."[14]

(3) Jesus died once and for all (Heb. 7:27; 9:25-28; 10:10-14). In contrast, the mystery gods were vegetation deities whose repeated deaths and resuscitations depict the annual cycle of nature.

(4) Jesus' death was an actual event in history. The death of the mystery god appears in a mythical drama with no historical ties; its continued rehearsal celebrates the recurring death and rebirth of nature. The incontestable fact that the early church believed that its proclamation of Jesus' death and resurrection was grounded in an actual historical event makes absurd any attempt to derive this belief from the mythical, non historical stories of the pagan cults.[15]

(5) Unlike the mystery gods, Jesus died voluntarily. Nothing like this appears even implicitly in the mysteries.

(6) And finally, Jesus' death was not a defeat but a triumph. Christianity stands entirely apart from the pagan mysteries in that its report of Jesus' death is a message of triumph. Even as Jesus was experiencing the pain and humiliation of the cross, He was the victor. The New Testament's mood of exultation contrasts sharply with that of the mystery religions, whose followers wept and mourned for the terrible fate that overtook their gods.[16]

[Copyright 1994 by the Christian Research Institute, P.O. Box 7000, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688-7000.]


III. An Examination of Syncretic Elements Reveals Borrowing My Have Gone the Other Way.
To some people the idea that elements of a religion must be original for that religion to contain truth content. But this "cultural influence" is not to say that the ideas of early Christianity were not original. The ideas of early Christianity were interpretations of events based upon the cultural understanding of the first century Jews of Palestine, and the thought patterns of those people were cross fertilized with other cultures, but they were also forged of their own unique experiences as Jews with God. Who is to say that the bread and wine were influences from pagan religion, or hold overs from the Passover, which also uses bread and wine, or both?


A. Original Calims Based Upon 19th Century Christian Scholarship
Nor is this notion of borrowing some new idea that modern skeptics invented, it is the hallmark of 19th century liberal Christian theology! One of the first to embark upon it was Otto Pfleiderer (1836-1900) who has been doubed "the father of the religio-historical school in Germany," and a Christian theologian (see Neil, The Interpretation of the New Testament from 1861-1961, London: Oxford University Press, 1964, 158). Many other theologians followed suit at the turn of the century. Even the major notions skeptics harp on the most, initiation ceremonies for eternal life (such as baptism) ritual meals with bread and wine (such as the Lord's supper) and the same words and phrases, Born to eternity, born again, born to eternal life, all were examined and put forward as originating in paganism by Christian theologians of 19th century liberalism (Ibid.). For most of them it did not destroy their faith, and it should not destroy ours. But neither should we stop with this word of reassurance. There are also good indications that the borrowing either went the other way, or was merely the coincidental happenstance of a common cultural background.


B. Most Mystery Syncretic Elements Do NOT Pre-date Gospels

Whiteley:
"Most of our extant evidence for the mystery cults comes from after the time of St. Paul. For example Apuleius, whose Golden Ass ..is one of our sources for these cults, wrote in the third quarter of the second century A.D. The magical papiri and hermetic writings, at least in their present form, are too late to have influenced St. Paul." The Theology of St Paul (p.2)



"Was The New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?"

by Ronald Nash

from the Christian Research Journal, Winter 19994, p 8

Elliot Miller Editor-in-Chief

http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources...b/crjo169a.html

"It is not until we come to the third century A.D. that we find sufficient source material (i.e., information about the mystery religions from the writings of the time) to permit a relatively complete reconstruction of their content. Far too many writers use this late source material (after A.D. 200) to form reconstruction's of the third-century mystery experience and then uncritically reason back to what they think must have been the earlier nature of the cults. This practice is exceptionally bad scholarship and should not be allowed to stand without challenge. Information about a cult that comes several hundred years after the close of the New Testament canon must not be read back into what is presumed to be the status of the cult during the first century A.D. The crucial question is not what possible influence the mysteries may have had on segments of Christendom after A.D. 400, but what effect the emerging mysteries may have had on the New Testament in the first century."
1) Mystery cult feast not predate Gospels
One of the major similarities is the notion of the feast, featuring bread and wine, especially the phrase used by Paul "the Lord's table." (1 Cor. 10:21)Mystery cults had such initiator and ritual feasts, corresponding to the Lord's Supper. Hans Leitzmann, Handbuch zum Neuen Testament, vol ix (1931) documents no pre-Chrsitian examples of have been found for the phrase "The Lord's Table."
There is a famous letter form Oxyrhynchus [Egypt] which speaks of the table or festival meal of "the lord Serapis." Stephen Neil points out that this phrase is by no means common, "not more than a dozen examples of it can be quoted from ancient literature, the inscriptions and the papyri." (171) Moreover, the Oxyrhynchus letter was written in the third century AD, and by that time the home of the Sarapis cult, Alexandria, was already a major Christian center. "...we have to reckon also with the possibility that when Chaeremon writes of the 'table of the lord Serapus' the borrowing is really the other way." (Ibid.,171).



"Of all the mystery cults, only Mithraism had anything that resembled the Lord's Supper. A piece of bread and a cup of water were placed before initiates while the priest of Mithra spoke some ceremonial words. But the late introduction of this ritual precludes its having any influence upon first-century Christianity." (Ronald Nash, Christian Research Journal, Winter 1994, p. 8)



2) 'reborn for eternity' and Baptism

This phrase was used by Christian scholar Kirsop Lake to link Christian baptism to the mystery cults, since it was a euphemism for baptism in the early church. This was also a pagan phrase from the mystery cults. The phrase renatus in aeternum ..(reborn for eternity) is often alleged to be connected with the rites of mythras, but Neil points out that there is no evidence to support this view. (172). The phrase more properly belongs to the cult of the great mother of Asia, or to Attis, and the ceremony known as the Taurobolium. In this ceremony a pit was dug, priests went into the pit, wood was placed over the opening, a bull was slain and the blood allowed to drip down onto the priests. Skeptics often liken this to either baptism or to being "washed in the blood" of Jesus! This is where, they claim, Christians got all of these ideas. The Priest who emerged from the pit was reborn for eternity. Neil shows that the first recorded instance of the ceremony was in the middle of the second century. This does not mean that the borrowing went from Christian to pagan, or even that this was the first ensconce of the ceremony. But Neil potions out that it did not become popular until the third of fourth century, according to all available evidence. Thus the possibility of borrowing from paganism is unlikely. (Ibid). Especially since baptism was a Jewish ritual and Judaism is full of ancient notions of blood and animal sacrifice through Passover and day of atonement.



3) Baptism and Blood.



Scholars such as R. Reitzenstein connects Paul's imagery (Romans 6) for the believers death and rebirth through baptism, and Christ's redemption by blood, and come up with the connection to the Taurobolium and influence from Mithrism. Gunter Wagner in his exhaustive study Pauline Baptism and thc Pagan Mysteries ( 1963) points out "The taurobolium in the Attis cult is first attested in the time of Antoninus Pius for A.D. 160. As far as we can see at present it only became a personal consecration at the beginning of the third century A.D. The idea of a rebirth through the instrumentality of the taurobolium only emerges in isolated instances towards the end of the fourth century A.D.; it is not originally associated with this bloodbath "[p. 266].

Bruce Metzger in "Methodology in the Study of the Mystery Religions and Early Christianity" (Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish and Christian (1968), notes:

"Thus, for example, one must doubtless interpret the change in the efficacy attributed to the rite of the taurobolium. In competing with Christianity, which promised eternal life to its adherents, the cult of Cybele officially or unofficially raised the efficacy of the blood bath from twenty years to eternity "[p. 11].

"Another aspect of comparisons between the resurrection of Christ and the mythological mysteries is that the alleged parallels are quite inexact. It is an error, for example, to believe that the initiation into the mysteries of Isis, as described in Apuleius's The Golden Ass, IS comparable to Christianity. For one thing, the hero, Lucius, had to pay a fortune to undergo his initiation. And as Wagner correctly observes: "Isis does not promise the mystes immortality, but only that henceforth he shall live under her protection, and that when at length he goes down to the realm of the dead he shall adore her . . ." (op. cit., p. 112).



Neil quotes one of the grates, professor A.D. Knock as saying that this phrase renatus in Aeternum is found in only three places and all form the fourth century (AD). Making the likelihood of borrowing very remote (Ibid.) As with most of these kinds of arguments, always check to find the date of the occurrence of pagan ritual. Chances are they come from post-Christian times.

JERDOG

I know this! I ask you this. Did the christian god ask for burned animal fat or not?

Or did the people just "think" that he did?

Got that info from more than one book my dear. But just to make sure I will ask a friend of mine who is buddist.


Oh why shoudl I believe a christain think tank on buddism? Can I post from pagna websites on christianity? Oh thats right you have double standards.

Your info you posted about Tammuz is supposed to be an argument? No one ever claimed that these people(gods) were real! Its the storys that are real!

And I never claimed that Tammuz was born of a virgin. I only claimed that they were born and reborn. which you admit to in your own argument. Why must you saturate you responses with rebuttals to arguments not even made?

You forgot that she to offered immortality to her followers.

Again about Dionysos you ramble on and on and on and on abotu how he was not resurected ect ect ect. Can you please show me where I have made that argument? Why must you saturate your responses with unessary nonsense? It sems ot be a weak debate tatic to tire peopel from responding to your post.

Obviously you do not deney this. You just plead that it has nothing to do with christ.

Another you admit too. Excepot the christian god is sooooo much better. Just like the new Honda accord is sooooo much better than the one 5 years ago.

Another simularity you admit too.

Kool, then lets see your source of info.


It doesn't matter. He acknowledges that simularities exist.


Another simularity you admit too.

Fallacy. Appeal to authority or the appeal to popularity. Most people say this or most say that.

You know what. I stopped quoting and responiding to you post. Look at where you so obviously get your answers from. Chrsitian answers .com? And this is a non biased sourse that doesn't have any motive? AND THEN YOU QUESTION MY AND OTHERS SOURCES?!?

You have just lost all credibility with me.