Yeah, none of the "bullet points" you've posted are actually reality.
I love that presentation. This pastor refutes unsubstantiated by actual proof in history atheist claims that Christianity is entirely pagan in the same mannerism as the atheists sarcasm attacks Christianity.
And this is perfect. Right around Christmas every year atheists, who exchange gifts because they're materialists and yet do so ON the day Christians recognize as Christ's date of birth. Even though his date of birth is not stated in scripture.
It refutes their claim that Christmas is entirely pagan.
Christ comes in handy once a year for the atheist. Presents!
Ha, well denial is one way to get around it.
I'm not sure why you think those claims are "unsubstantiated by actual proof in history"????
All of those bullet points are from the most current biblical PhD scholar
Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier
everything on that list is sourced and the sources are listed. A video by a pastor giving opinions as a way to argue against current PhD scholarship is hilarious.
"refutes unsubstantiated by actual proof in history"
The pastor didn't give one single source and he has no historicity cred? That's your response. HA !
Even the early Christian apologists like Justin Martyr (
Dialogue 69) admitted Christianity was pagan:
When we say…Jesus Christ…was produced without sexual union, and was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, we propound nothing new or different from what you believe regarding those whom you call Sons of God. [In fact]…if anybody objects that [Jesus] was crucified, this is in common with the sons of Zeus (as you call them) who suffered, as previously listed [
he listed Dionysus, Hercules, and Asclepius]. Since their fatal sufferings are all narrated as not similar but different, so his unique passion should not seem to be any worse.
As to Christmas, it's a secular holiday where people exchange gifts. It has nothing to do with any religion for those who are not religious.
Dec 25 was a common birthday for some pagan gods and the early church used it for that reason.
But the reason it's pagan are because of the things on that list and much more parallels to other mystery religions.
Notice - SOURCES....
Osiris
Not only does Plutarch
say Osiris
returned to life and was
recreated, exact terms for resurrection (
anabiôsis and
paliggenesia:
On Isis and Osiris 35; see my discussion in
The Empty Tomb, pp. 154-55), and also describe his
physically returning to earth after his death (Plutarch,
On Isis and Osiris 19), but the physical resurrection of Osiris’s corpse is
explicitly described in pre-Christian
pyramid inscriptions!
Plutarch
writes that “Osiris came to Horus from the other world and exercised and trained him for the battle,” and taught him lessons, and then “Osiris consorted with Isis after his death and she became the mother of Harpocrates.” It’s hard to get more explicit than that. Contrary to Ehrman, there is no mention of Osiris
not being in his resurrected body at that point. To the contrary, every version of his myth has him revive only
after Isis reassembles and reanimates his corpse. As Plutarch
says, “the soul of Osiris is everlasting and imperishable, but his body Typhon oftentimes dismembers and causes to disappear, and that Isis wanders hither and yon in her search for it, and fits it together again” (
On Isis and Osiris 54).
And indeed, carved on the walls of the pyramids centuries before Christianity began were the declarations of the goddess Isis (or Horus, or their agents), “I have come to thee…that I may revivify thee, that I may assemble for thee thy bones, that I may collect for thee thy flesh, that I may assemble for thee thy dismembered limbs…raise thyself up, king, [as for] Osiris; thou livest!” (Pyramid Texts 1684a-1685a and 1700, =
Utterance 606; cf.
Utterance 670); “Raise thyself up; shake off thy dust; remove the dirt which is on thy face; loose thy bandages!” (Pyramid Texts 1363a-b, =
Utterance 553); “[As for] Osiris, collect thy bones; arrange thy limbs; shake off thy dust; untie thy bandages; the tomb is open for thee; the double doors of the coffin are undone for thee; the double doors of heaven are open for thee…thy soul is in thy body…raise thyself up!” (Pyramid Texts 207b-209a and 2010b-2011a, =
Utterance 676). That sure sounds like a physical resurrection of Osiris’s body to me. (As even confirmed by the most recent translation
of James P. Allen, cf. pp. 190, 224-25, 272. The spells he clarifies are sung to and about the resident Pharaoh, but in the role of Osiris, receiving the same resurrection as Osiris, e.g. “there has been done for me what was done for my father Osiris on the day of tying bones together, of making functional the feet,” “do for him that which you did for his brother Osiris on the day,” etc.)
Plutarch goes on to explicitly state that this resurrection on earth (set in actual earth history) in the same body he died in (reassembled and restored to life) was the
popular belief, promoted in allegorical tales by the priesthood—as was also the god’s
later descent to rule Hades. But the secret “true” belief taught among the initiated priesthood was that Osiris becomes incarnate, dies, and rises back to life every year in a secret cosmic battle in the sublunar heavens. So in fact, contrary to Ehrman (who evidently never actually read any of the sources on this point), Plutarch says the belief that Osiris went to Hades
was false (
On Isis and Osiris 78); and yet even in that “public” tale, Osiris rules in Hades in his old body of flesh, restored to life. Hence still plainly resurrected. But as Plutarch
explains (
On Isis and Osiris 25-27 & 54 and 58), the
esoteric truth was that the god’s death and resurrection occurs in sublunar space, after each year descending and taking on a mortal body to die in; and that event definitely involved coming back to life in a new superior body, in which Osiris ascends to a higher realm to rule
from above, all exactly as was said of the risen Jesus (who no more remained on earth than Osiris did). The only difference is that when importing this into Judaism, which had not a cyclical-eternal but a linear-apocalyptic conception of theological history, they converted the god’s dying-and-rising to a singular apocalyptic event.
And that’s just Osiris. Clearly raised from the dead in his original, deceased body, restored to life; visiting people on earth in his risen body; and then ruling from heaven above. And that directly adjacent to Judea, amidst a major Jewish population in Alexandria, and popular across the whole empire. But as Plutarch said in
On the E at Delphi 9,
many religions of his day “narrate
deaths and
vanishings, followed by returns to life and
resurrections.” Not just that one. Plutarch names Dionysus as but an example (and by other names “
Zagreus, Nyctelius, and Isodaetes“). And we know for a fact this Dionysus wasn’t the only example Plutarch would have known. Plutarch only names him because he was so closely associated with Osiris, and the most famous.
