It shows that claims about Christianity copying Zoroastrianism are at least exaggerated.
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Why Didn't God Leave Huge Quantities of Secular Evidence For Jesus?
- Thread starter SeekingAllTruth
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- belief crucifixion jesus
It shows that claims about Christianity copying Zoroastrianism are at least exaggerated.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
I have only seen the apologists exaggerate the claims.
If you only copied only half of a test off of a friend did you still cheat?
What claims did apologists exaggerate? The word Messiah has different meanings to different people. To Jewish people the Messiah is a political figure and not God. Even if Zoroastrians used the term Messiah, it doesn't mean it was comparable to the Christian usage of the term, meaning God the Creator and Savior and the mediator between God and man.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
The claims of the degree of copying. Until you answer the following question this will be my only response to you:
If you only copied only half of a test off of a friend did you still cheat?
Yes, but Christianity didn't copy the second coming from Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrian writings don't have a core doctrine of the second coming like the Bible does and that Messiah like figure in their beliefs isn't Zoroaster. He's not a Christ figure.
Egyptian mythology never taught that Horus was God in the flesh.
How is that evidence that Christians wove their storyline into the prophecies? Where is the evidence they did? There is no more proof Christians wove their storyline into the prophecies than there is that the Jewish beliefs about the Messiah wove their interpretations into the prophecies?
Pilgrim Soldier
Active Member
You've lost touch with reality through your entitlement mentality. The fact is, people in the third world countries are vastly superior in every way to dumb westerners.
All westerners know is Hollywood, video games and McDonalds fast food, they don't have a clue what reality is so God is punishing them with misery, depression, drug addiction, gender confusion, sexual confusion, AIDS, suicide, bestiality and every other sick and depraved thing imaginable.
Pastors and priests use the Bible for their own agenda sometimes. I know about a pastor who said that God told him to tell the congregation to give him money. They are human beings who make mistakes like everyone else. What they do has nothing to do with what Jesus taught.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
I would say that Mary's ten year pregnancy is pretty good evidence.
joelr
Well-Known Member
Besides that this implies the opposite:
"Let no man beguile you ... intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind. Colossians 2:18"
this also is another tired old cliche all religious myths say. Of course when people write stories that are supposed messages from a God they are going to say don't expect evidence? Because an actual God would know he could provide evidence at any time. This is just another thing in a long line of reasons why these are just stories created by people.
Everyone knows the catch-22 - "oh God wants you to believe on faith". Except every God suspiciously says this. So why would one God want to mirror what is known to be mythology so closely?
Also this thing about proof is BS. The OT is full of stories of Yahweh interacting with humans, Then Jesus has all these miracle stories including a supposed resurrection. Nothing is written until 40 years later and in a different language. Then it's written by non-eyewitnesses in the most mythic writing style possible and suspiciously creates stories that are often re-writes of OT stories and the main character scores higher than King Arthur on the Rannk Ragalin mythotype scale.
There is zero evidence that God said anything.
joelr
Well-Known Member
I'm starting to think you are just trolling people for fun. I do not care what J.P. Holding has to say. Can you find a historian to source?
The blog article I linked to from an actual history DR. already explained that Mithras wasn't a dying/rising demigod. He does list others that were before Jesus.
As I pointed out, the Zoroastrian concepts of a world savior come from about 6BC. This is before it was written in the OT. Do you want to see online where Mary Boyce actually says this?
The OT did not mention a savior until after the Persian period had started. Did you watch the link to a video of OT professor Stravopopolou explaining this? Do you need me to re-link it again?
joelr
Well-Known Member
Clearly you do not care about what is true. Another article by a amateur? This is why you cannot trust amateur apologetics. They will only use facts that support their beliefs.
What he says about Dionysus resurrection -
"While most restoration accounts of Dionysus are too ambiguous to matter, there is one story that reads: “Dionysus was deceived by the Titans, and expelled from the throne of Jupiter, and torn in pieces by them, and his remains being afterwards put together again, he returned as it were once more to life, and ascended to heaven.”
Unfortunately there are accounts of his resurrection written around 50 BC in the Diodorus Library of History. Your apologist missed that.
Mr Apologist then seems to think that because other Gods didn't die on a cross this means it's different. Again, religious syncretism means each myth changes the details. The way each God dies isn't the point, it's that there is a death and resurrection. It's all copied mythology.
What Carrier said about Dionysis:
"
Dionysus (also popularly known as Bacchus) had many different tales told of him, just as Osiris did. But in one popularly known, he was killed by being torn apart as a baby (Justin Martyr, Apology 1.21; Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 35; Diodorus, Library of History 5.75.4 and 3.62.6); he was then resurrected by a human woman (Semele) conceiving a new body for him in her womb after drinking a magic slushy made from bits of his corpse (Hyginus, Fabulae 167). This is a literal resurrection again, just by an elaborate mechanism. The god definitely dies, and then returns to life by acquiring the same kind of body he once had, assembled and “regrown” from parts of his old one. In this version of his myth, he is a full god (son of Zeus and Persephone) but still mortal (capable of being killed by dismemberment, like a vampire); he then is “reborn” a demigod (from the womb of a fully mortal human woman). He was the savior god central to the Bacchic mysteries, one of the most widely known and celebrated in the Western world at that time. Those baptized into his cult received eternal life in paradise; and just like Christians (1 Corinthians 15:29), Dionysians could even baptize themselves on behalf of deceased loved ones, and thus rescue those already dead.
joelr
Well-Known Member
The article uses Bart Ehrman quotes and opinions (a real biblical historian) several times. Bart says straight out that the gospels were written at least 40 years after the time Jesus taught and was written in a different language. His point is that it is in no way accurate to what was being taught.
Ehrman also explains that the gospels do not even try to pretend they are eyewitness accounts.
We know for sure Mark was the first gospel, the others were copied from Mark and Mark is full of parables, re-worked OT stories and all of the supernatural claims are unproven and similar to all other supernatural myths.
The idea that this one story is actually real is as unlikely as a story about Krishna or Zeus.
joelr
Well-Known Member
All you are doing is confirming what I was saying? I don't care if it's a God marrying a woman or a "miraculous conception"? These are still myths?
Jesus in his humanity means he was a God and human, that is a demigod?
I know you will say "oh but Jesus was God". Again, don't care about the myths. Jesus as God is a creation of John. Saying that Jesus was God and thinking that that means this myth is real because of that is like saying the Bible is true because it says it's true.
Although it doesn't matter, the Bible isn't really clear, or cannot decide if Jesus really was God because it says things like Jesus will sit at the right hand of the father and his father was greater than him and so on.
As usual it's all contradictions only explained by outlandish apologetics.
joelr
Well-Known Member
Wow, yet another amateur article.
I already gave the Carrier essay on virgin birth which gives numerous examples as well as motivation. But even if it was actually invented in the gospels, so what? Do you think every invention in all mythologies is real? Do you realize that every concept in Lord of the Rings and all other fiction is made up? People can make stuff up? For a myth to be influenced by another myth it does not have to be identical.
Was West Side Story identical to Romeo and Juliet?
"This is, of course, false. Ra is born of a virgin mother, was not conceived sexually, and predates Christian mythology (by a lot). Perseus, too, is born of a virgin mother, was not conceived any more sexually than Jesus was (both Perseus and Jesus involve magical fluids impregnating their respective mothers), and also long predates Christian tradition (and was even acknowledged by early Christians themselves as doing so). Hephaestus was also in popular conception born of a virgin (albeit a magically reinstated virginity), was not conceived by any material means at all, and again in a tradition well antedating Christianity."
as to motivations:
"So the notion that the virgin birth was not a lift from paganism is highly improbable. The idea is obviously a Jewish adaptation of a popular motif in surrounding cultures. There is no other credible explanation for why it ever became important to claim such a thing of Jesus. Just as “our God must be able to do things your God can” led to syncretistic innovation within Judaism (whereby, for example, the Jews suddenly “discovered” their God would resurrect them, at oddly the very same time they learned the Zoroastrian God would), so “our godman must be as awesome as your godmen” had the same effect. Thus, Jesus couldn’t be sexually conceived, because that was gross, and yet he had to be a pre-existent being inserted into a woman’s womb to reify prophecy. A conundrum. But as soon as Jews saw how the pagans solved this problem for their godmen, they would obviously have stolen the very same solution. This is how all ideas and technologies proliferate from one culture to another. “Well if pagan gods can directly create fetuses just with their divine pneuma, then so can ours, damnit!”"
joelr
Well-Known Member
What are you talking about? I said Attis was not mentioned in this article about dying/rising savior gods who pre-date Christianity?
Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier
There are parallels that exist but I haven't heard communion is one. It's about a savior who resurrects and gets all followers into an afterlife. This is a Hellenistic idea that became very popular for obvious reasons. It's a myth that people still love because it helps people become less fearful of death.
Communion is clearly an offshoot of sacrificial practices done where people would eat the actual body and blood of the sacrifice victim to gain some sort of vitality or spirit....whatever. Christiains actually say this is my body, this is my blood.....so archaic?!
joelr
Well-Known Member
First you cannot even demonstrate that it wasn't meant to be Satan in that story. The author is just saying it "might" be some other evil spirit (hilarious) even though Yahweh already uses Satan to inflict a plague killing 70,000 people and allows Satan to torture Job.
The troubling spirit is is analogous to the satan.
Why any of this matters I don't know because the point is that after the Persian period Satan became re-worked and was much closer to the "enemy of God" version of Satan that is now more popular. This was clearly influenced by the Persians because the OT also copied several other concepts.
(circumcision, pagan; pork taboo, pagan; resurrection, pagan; monotheism, pagan; the apocalypse, pagan; hellfire, pagan;
joelr
Well-Known Member
Why would it matter where Zoroastrianism took their myths from? Guess what - ALL MYTHS BORROWED FROM EACH OTHER?
The hero's journey story model is used in Lord of the Rings (Bilbo), Star Wars (Luke), The Matrix (Neo) and countless other stories. They are all very different but still copy a basic myth.
All PhD hhistorians explain that the OT borrowed myth from the Persian invasion. I do not care what "gotquestions.org has to say. Can you make an actual point and use a historian source? Or are you only able to write 1 sentence and a link to an amateur article? Do you have to do that EVERY TIME?
joelr
Well-Known Member
So first eternal punishment being "just" is ridiculous. Again, the first 3 commandments are about non-freedom of religion. So if one enjoys graven images without repenting that justifies eternal punishment?
Sin is a made up concept in a bronze age religion. What's worse is this "hell" you speak of isn't even part of the religion? It's not there? Then after they encounter it during a 300 year Zoroastrian invasion it slowly finds it's way into their religion. Wow, what a coincidence.
Newsflash - it's made up.
Look at this, from the Wiki page on salvation,like I said the Jews did not believe in afterlife until the invasion. The religious leaders denied the afterlife.
These are the experts on Yahweh's commands and they know of NO AFTERLIFE.
"During the Second Temple Period, the Sadducees, High Priests, denied any particular existence of individuals after death because it wasn't written in the Torah, while the Pharisees, ancestors of the rabbis, affirmed both bodily resurrection and immortality of the soul, most likely based on the influence of Hellenistic ideas about body and soul and the Pharisaic belief in the Oral Torah. The Pharisees maintained that after death, the soul is connected to God until the messianic era when it is rejoined with the body in the land of Israel at the time of resurrection.[10]"
Based on the influence of Hellenistic ideas about body and soul. Like I said the dying/rising demigods who get you into an afterlife are originally Hellenistic.
Oh, and how did God die? A resurrection isn't dying?