Why Didn't God Leave Huge Quantities of Secular Evidence For Jesus?

joelr said:

I didn't see Attis in this article by an actual historian on virgin births, but there are plenty of other examples.

Virgin Birth: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier
"there were also full-on virgin births (at the very least, Perseus and Ra) and conceptions without sexual union regardless of the mother’s virginity otherwise (Hephaestus, directly created in Hera’s womb; Mithras, spontaneously born from a rock; and Dionysus, in the myth by which his mother Semele conceives him a second time by drinking a potion; and many more I’ll enumerate shortly), which are actually far more pertinent precedents of the the ideas stolen by the Jews to invent such a comparable miraculous origin for Jesus (in defiance of even their own logic that he was supposed to be conceived by the seed of David, or in any case the seed of his necessarily human descendants—hence Matthew’s genealogy for Joseph, for example)....


But borrow they did. Before Christianity arose, pagan theology was already awash with women conceiving asexually, and also promulgated the idea of women giving birth as still virgins. Judaism had no comparable idea. Even the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 would have been read by Jews through a Jewish interpretational filter—a filter that lacked any other notion except that a virgin would conceive on her wedding night in the usual way—until they had a pagan filter to see it through. Only then, though Isaiah 7 never mentions a virgin birth (only that a maiden will become pregnant; not that she would then remain a maiden), would any Jew imagine it could have said what pagans might have imagined: that this mother will remain a virgin, thus portending a miracle. That step in reasoning is pagan. And only comes from a pagan milieu. The Christians assimilated their godman to pagan godmen, by Judaizing the pagan elements required. Thus, they preferred the pagan godmen who were fathered sexlessly by God’s pneuma and dynamis (a la Plutarch), upon women who chastely never had sex with anyone else either, so that even the vagina itself that the godman would pass through would be pure of sexual corruption. Ra came by such a way. Perseus as well. And if we allow revirginizing magic, Hephaestus, too. And if they, why not Jesus?"..

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SeekingAllTruth said:

Jesus is not a carbon copy of Dionysus. Jesus is an amalgamation of several dying/rising gods.

"....most secular historians also agree that the gospels contain large quantities of ahistorical legendary details mixed in with historical information about Jesus's life."

Jesus in comparative mythology - Wikipedia

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Subduction Zone said:

When one "speaks things into being" one performs a verbal magical act.

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Muffled said:

I believe that is where we differ on the definition of magic. I don't call a carpenter calling out 26 inches to a worker, magic. God uses words to create things like a carpenter uses words to build things.

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Skywalker said:

The exagarated Attis parallel makes it questionable if other virgin birth parallels are even true.

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Subduction Zone said:

Why do you even care about this? You keep forgetting that the Jesus Nativity is myth too.

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SeekingAllTruth said:

You're back to the same ol' problem: personal interpretation--what YOU think the scriptures say about Jesus. Everybody has their own interpretation of what was expected of Jesus because the scriptures are so vague in their language. I could locate a dozen Hebrew Bible scholars who say Jesus isn't the Messiah. The messiah was supposed to bring universal peace. Jesus did not fulfill that prophecy.

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Who is the Messiah? How could it be Jesus?
When considering the identity of the Messiah, many Jewish people immediately discredit the candidacy of Jesus. They ask, “If Jesus was the Messiah, why didn’t he bring peace? What about all the prophecies he didn’t fulfill?”

The Jewish understanding and expectation of the Messiah comes from hundreds of messianic prophesies found in the Tanach. These prophecies have been generally sorted into two categories: some passages describe a man rejected and humble, suffering quietly (Isaiah 52:13-53:12 being the most prominent), while others describe a victorious king, justly ruling over a world transformed by the universal knowledge of God (i.e. Isaiah 11:1-9)

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Skywalker said:

Demigods are not born of virgins they are descendants of gods and women.

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Subduction Zone said:

The legends disagree, some of them are born of virgins. You are nit picking and it is a losing battle anyway.

By the way, why do you keep dodging the question on what the Tenth Commandment is. You even listed the chapter of Exodus where it can be found . Heck let me do your homework for you:

Bible Gateway passage: Exodus 34 - New International Version

"“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk."

"27 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28 Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments."

By the way, that verse also refutes your claim that the Bible does not contradict itself and that God wrote the Ten Commandments in the Bible. One cannot ignore the verses that contradict others which is what your bogus source did.

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Horus – A Virgin Birth?

When Peter Joseph’s conspiracy film, Zeitgeist, came out in 2007, I had a student come up to me after I taught one of my World Religion classes at a local college.

As we were walking out to the parking lot together, he told me about this film and wanted to know if the story of Jesus was really based on pagan myths. For example, the video asserted that Jesus’ virgin birth was parallel with the birth of an Egyptian god named Horus. But does the myth itself really say that Horus was born of a virgin?

In Egyptian mythology, Horus’ mother, Isis, was already married to the god Osiris for some time before his conception. But more than this, the best Egyptian account of the myth tells us that that Horus was not born of a virgin.

It actually says that Isis “took in his seed and created the heir…Osiris’ son, Horus, stout of heart, justified, son of Isis.”[1] So the idea that the first Christians copied the story of Jesus’ virgin birth from Horus doesn’t work right off the bat. Why? Because there’s no virgin birth story there to copy.

In fact, there is no ancient evidence of a story about Horus being born of a virgin.

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Skywalker said:

Horus was not born of a virgin. The Virgin Birth Of Jesus – Did The Church Make This Up? | Reasons for Jesus

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Subduction Zone said:

Are you sure? If that is the case why can't you find a reliable source that says so?

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Skywalker said:

Horus's mother being married to Osiris is only a superficial similarity to Mary.

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Subduction Zone said:

Hmm, like Mary's marriage to Joseph?

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Subduction Zone said:

Why do you even care about this? You keep forgetting that the Jesus Nativity is myth too.

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2. He was considered the savior who was slain for the salvation of mankind.
On we go, to Attis’ soteriology. and to put it mildly, this is just plain wrong.
In a study devoted entirely to the subject of “soteriology” in the Attis cult, Gasparro finds no “explicit statements about the prospects open to the mystai of Cybele and Attis” and “little basis in the documents in our possession” for the idea of “a ritual containing a symbology of death and resurrection to a new life.” [Gasp.AAO, 82]

PUT IT BLUNTLY: ATTIS WAS NO SAVIOR, AND WAS NEVER RECOGNIZED AS SUCH. THE CLOSEST WE GET TO THIS IS FROM A WRITER NAMED DAMASCIUS (480-550 AD) WHO HAD A DREAM IN WHICH A FESTIVAL OF ATTIS CELEBRATED “SALVATION FROM HADES” (SEE MORE BELOW).

We also see some evidence of Attis as a protector of tombs (as other gods also were, guarding them from violation); use of Attis with reference to grief and mourning — but when it comes to the gravestones of devotees of Cybele and Attis, they are “all equally oblivious to special benefits the future life guaranteed by such a religious status.” [Gasp.Sot, 90-4].

Attis may indeed have been raised somehow (see below), but it didn’t do us any good! We do see some evidence of a soteriology in a related rite, however, and that we will save for later.

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Skywalker said:

What about Attis made him a Savior figure?Jesus Vs Attis – Debunking The Alleged Parallels | Reasons for Jesus

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Subduction Zone said:

The need for a savior is a Christian myth. That only is a claim that God is incompetent and immoral. It is not a winning point.

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Skywalker said:

Demigods are not born of virgins they are descendants of gods and women.

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SeekingAllTruth said:

Hercules was a demi-god born of god Jupiter and mortal woman Alcmene. That's a perfect role model for the writers of the gospels.

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First, we must start with the premise that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is the God of order and not chaos or confusion. And above all, He is not like the Greek gods Cronus or Zeus.

On that note, I think we can all agree that Yeshua/Jesus is not a demigod like Hercules or Perseus, the sons of Zeus who are half-human.

No, we believe Yeshua is fully God and fully man. So how can that be if a virgin who knew no man, is pregnant? Remember, God is Spirit. He is unlike anything we can comprehend! He has no beginning and no end. He is holy and set apart. People, He has no seed!

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Skywalker said:

Whether one believes in the Bible's teaching of a Savior, that doesn't mean that Attis in the beliefs of his religion was a savior.

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Subduction Zone said:

Other religions do not need a savior. That is a flaw that is limited to Christianity.

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