Kosh

You're not alone. I'm still having trouble
following how he connected the two.

Christopher Lord

I guess you could say that over time, the memory of a true story has transformed into the mythical Jesus we have today. As best as I can surmise, this theory states that 2000 years ago Christians where a bunch of pagans worshiping T. (the dead pharoh).

After a little while, this cult 'modernized' and fragmented. Over time it became fairly popular and the Romans picked it up and adapted it. A 'Great Purging' occured, and the mythical Jesus was all that was left. This would be when our earliest records of the church appear.

It all makes sense (or at least what I have gleaned from this thread does), but without reading some books, I cant say what sort of evidence exists for it.

I do think that something like this happened. It would seem to be human nature. If Jesus was a mythical construct, it most certainly didn't pop into existance 2000 years ago. Something/Someone else had to act as the seed.

[ February 11, 2002: Message edited by: Christopher Lord ]</p>

Pandora

I’ve been doing a bit of research over the weekend, mainly reading some essays by Pope that I found here: <a href="http://www.domainofman.com/" target="_blank">http://www.domainofman.com/</a> (Can’t get a decent book in English out here for weeks!)

From what I’ve read, it seems pretty convincing, however, I’d like to see what the other side says (as long as it’s not goddiditt). Unfortunately, if you’re not an expert on ancient Greek, Hebrew and Egyptian, you have to hope and trust in what they are saying. The examples they are putting forward are good, but to me it seems the question is what percentage is tying up?

Also, if you look at this information with a firm conviction that the Bible is God’s word and that a historical Jesus existed, it’s going to be hard to swallow.

Kosh

I don't know, the whole thing reads like a
Theiring book, which sets off alarms in my head.
The first site by Arman seemed for believable.

Do we not have the technical ability now to
quickly determine if Jews are simply descended
from Egyptians? A simple DNA or mitochondrial
DNA should bear this out, no?

Pandora

Quote: “Do we not have the technical ability now to
quickly determine if Jews are simply descended
from Egyptians? A simple DNA or mitochondrial
DNA should bear this out, no? “

It was not the case that the Jewish race was descended as such from the Egyptian race. They were two separate ethnic groups that lived alongside each other.

Obviously there would have been a certain amount of inter marrying, but as far as the Pharaohs were concerned, maintaining the royal bloodlines was so important that any of them were a result of incestuous relationships.

If no male heir was produced by the Royal wife, it would be more likely for the Pharaoh to marry one of his daughters in the hopes of producing a son rather than recognize the son of a lesser and perhaps foreign wife.

In the beginning of his book, O’Farrell makes a point of the rescue excavation carried out before the flooding of a section of the Nile Valley. A large quantity of skeletons were discovered that were not Egyptian in origin.

I can’t remember all the details but I think it turned out that they were Semitic in origin and structure.

Work is currently being carried out on the DNA of the mummies found in the Valley of Kings, in order to try to establish who were the parents of who.

CX

I seem to recall some recent controversy about Hebrew and Arabic peoples being descended from the same common ancestor. Does anyone have a reference on that?

Pantera

Arnaiz-Villena found last year that there is essentially no genetic difference between Jews and Palestinians. Unfortunately, the paper was pulled because it contained a lot of what amounted to political commentary on the current Arab Israeli conflict from an obviously anti-Israeli bias. If you can still find it, the reference is Human Immunology, Vol 62 (2001), Issue 9, page 889-900. There was a PD thread on it <a href="http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=12&t=001665&p=" target="_blank">here</a>.

boneyard bill

Pandora writes:

[QUOTE] It was not the case that the Jewish race was descended as such from the Egyptian race. They were two separate ethnic groups that lived alongside each other.
[/QUO
It's probably even more complicated than that. I read of one researcher who claimed to have connected the tribes of Israel with the invaders called the "sea people" who seem to have spread throughout the Mediterranean near the end of the 2nd Century B.C. So the old testament probably isn't just about recording the history of an extended family but about a constructive integretion of history, geneology, and religion into a national myth that united disparate ethnic groups under a single identity.

Kosh

Second century seems a bit late (wouldn't the
Romans have recorded something about that?).
But I have heard that theory and it makes
sense WRT to the extreme ages claimed in Genesis
of the Patriarchs. It was simply their attempt
to establish that they'd been around a lot longer
and legitimize their claim to the area.

Tomije

Maybe it's me, but I like to believe the easiest answer.

And it is really simple.

Jesus did exist, and was a bit of revolutionary. He campaigned for the poor, raised some hell, and got killed for it.

His followers later ascribed (stole) some Mythology. Comparing Jesus to King Tut makes no sense. King Tut was a minor a pharoah, and never lived to see his twenties.

Compare Jesus to Mithras, and you got something. The early Christians clearly (and brilliantly) stole Roman holidays and made them Christian. The connections are there. Mithras was a God the Romans had incorporated into their pantheon, and was a Virgin Birth. Did Christians incorporate pagan beliefs? Of course they did. Was King Tut a forgotten king back in 30 CE? Yes, he was. Especially in Jerusalem.

There is almost no mythology based on King Tut. He was a forgetten king, until Carter dug up his tomb.

This whole theory is so stupid, it's not worth talking about, frankly.

How a man who almost surely lived 1400 years after the death of a 14 year old boy could be wrapped into one entity is beyond me. It takes a lot of creative horsepucky.