Do We Need Faith?

[samtonga43]

Yawn. Typical apologist tricks. Go after the person giving information. Don't debunk the information in an honest exchange, that would require actual facts and truth, just go ad-hom.
Talk about a box? It doesn't matter what apologist meant in ancient Greece. The fact is it's become pseudo-science, lies, denial or revisionist history (from any source) as long as it backs up what they want to be true. You say this now yet just last post I EXPOSED all the lies. Every single savior demigod used in the apologists article was NOT ORIGINAL SOURCES and from information that had been altered to make Christianity look passable. The truth was in EVERY CASE the actual original source confirms they were indeed savior demigods, even resurrecting in 3 days.
He lied about Justin Martyr, in fact JM was literally saying Jesus is just like all the older Greek demigods, in many many ways. Of course his excuse is Satan went back in a Delorian to make history look like that to fool Christians.
This is crank.The vast majority of apologetics is crank. C.S. Lewis, Jesus is either a madman/crazy or son of god. Uh, oops Mr Lewis, could he be a MYTH???
Lee Strobel, the gospels must be true because they harmonize so well? Uh, right, except all actual Christian scholars agree that the Synoptic Problem demonstrates all used Mark to create their narrative. At least in part. Hmmm, could that be it? Mr Strobel seemed to forget to mention that? Crank.

Jonathan Z. Smith (historian from the University of Chicago) writes, “All the deities that have been identified as belonging to the class of dying and rising deities can be subsumed under the two larger classes of disappearing deities or dying deities. In the first case, the deities return but have not died; in the second case, the gods die but do not return.”

Skeptic Matt Dillahunty (of Atheist Experience) writes, “The first third of the film (Zeitgeist) is an unscholarly, sophomoric, horribly flawed, over-simplification that tries to portray Christianity as nothing more than the next incarnation of the astrologically themed religions that preceded it. Like all conspiracy theories, they combine a few facts, focus on correlations and build an intriguing story that seems to fit the pieces together nicely—provided you don’t actually dig below the surface to find out where they might have gone wrong.”

Regarding the Cross and Atonement, atheistic critical scholar Bart Ehrman writes, “Where do any of the ancient sources speak of a divine man who was crucified as an atonement for sin? So far as I know, there are no parallels to the central Christian claim. What has been invented here is not the Christian Jesus but the mythicist claims about Jesus… The majority of scholars agree… there is no unambiguous evidence that any pagans prior to Christianity believed in dying and rising gods.” He adds, “None of this literature is written by scholars trained in the New Testament.”

Was Christianity Copied from Pagan Myths? | Evidence Unseen

 

[joelr]

Here is what I said: "Can I ask you, joel, in your own words, to tell me what you think the function of an apologist is? Oh, and maybe you could also explain the difference between an apologist and a theologian? (If you think there is a difference, of course)".
I asked this question because you do not appear to be clear in your own mind about this subject. This is not wasting time. If you are not sure about the basic terms (apologetics, historicity, theology) underlying your ‘argument’, then I cannot take you seriously. So please try to answer my question.

If I appear not to be clear then you are probably not familiar with apologetics.
Obviously theology is a study of the religion and what the deity meant by the scripture and Apologetics is arguing for the religion being true.
Unfortunately the religions are not true so tactics must be employed. Apologists are not standardized and all over the map.
Modern apologists for example will deny Jesus is similar to older Greek savior deities.
They sometimes just use denial. In recent posts we saw (oh that was your post) an apologist use all incorrect sources (Google?) which used bad information. Of course they could read from a historians work but they know it will not give them the results they want.

The apologist (mainly a chemist) also said pagans despised resurrection. Except the apocalyptic resurrection myth that started the entire genre was the Persian myth I posted from the work of Mary Boyce. It then appeared as Revelation in the NT.
Oddly enough had modern apologists checked with their 2nd century counterparts they could have cleared this one issue all up nice. Because not only Martyr but Firmicus Maternus, Tertullian all claimed that yes Jesus was just like all those Greek demigods. Except their reason was the devil went back in time and made it look that way to fool Christians.


At any rate, this post is a ruse. A complete waste of time and another stalling trick if anything at all.
We are way past this. You already posted two apologists articles. Both were teeming with incorrect information, possibly lies, almost every single statement is not backed by historical information. I took time to expose several of them. More than enough to make the point.
Also anything said regarding historical information that I demonstrated to be wrong, really is wrong because I used historians and he is a chemist who writes apologist articles. Usually it's a Pastor who is equally clueless.
I don't know what apologists are doing anymore? I haven't seen Habermas, Licona, or anyone active actually dealing with real issues, even things Christian scholarship is doing like the work on the Synoptic Problem or the Jesus Seminar, these are being ignored by apologists and the Synoptic issue is completely denied. Doesn't exist. all the Gospels are independent and they have no interest in what actual Christians in academia are doing. So fine, it's Pseudoscience.

Your response to all of the apologists phrases I took and used current scholarship to debunk, is that you can't take me serious? That right there, is apologetics.

 

[joelr]

Jonathan Z. Smith (historian from the University of Chicago) writes, “All the deities that have been identified as belonging to the class of dying and rising deities can be subsumed under the two larger classes of disappearing deities or dying deities. In the first case, the deities return but have not died; in the second case, the gods die but do not return.”

First of all, this is old. Smith is not contributing to any modern NT/Jesus studies at all. Smith has many arguments with Price who found his grouping to be absurd because there are counter examples. Now there is no doubt.Less was known in the past because. some of the clay tablets and information had not been found.

Since this time refutation of Smith’s conclusions has become standard. He did not specialize in Greek and Middle Eastern mythology and was simply wrong.

Jonathan Z. Smith
"Perhaps the most rigorous refutation of Smith’s conclusions (which, incidentally, have become more or less the consensus among scholars of comparative religion) came from Tryggve N. D. Mettinger (see: The Riddle of Resurrection, 2001). However, even Mettinger admits one can hardly defend Frazer’s original conception. After all, Frazer’s “central idea,” as stated in the preface to the first edition of The Golden Bough was that of a “slain god” — which would seem to leave out those gods who voluntarily move to the underworld for alternate periods."

Skeptic Matt Dillahunty (of Atheist Experience) writes, “The first third of the film (Zeitgeist) is an unscholarly, sophomoric, horribly flawed, over-simplification that tries to portray Christianity as nothing more than the next incarnation of the astrologically themed religions that preceded it. Like all conspiracy theories, they combine a few facts, focus on correlations and build an intriguing story that seems to fit the pieces together nicely—provided you don’t actually dig below the surface to find out where they might have gone wrong.”

Uh, you already posted this. And I already said this was based on the work of D.M. Murdock who is not a PhD historian, her work is not peer-reviewed and scholars in the field point out MANY mistakes she's made in her work.
Dr Carrier has said this many times and also here:
"
Mythicist Milwaukee & King’s Tower Productions are going to produce a well-researched film about the Jesus myth theory that deliberately eliminates the flaws of past films (like that awful Zeitgeist thing) and pays attention to the best scholarship on the issue, while also introducing a lot of entertaining features as well as educational ones.
A Better Movie on the Jesus Myth • Richard Carrier"

and Matt Dillahunty is an atheist who has been destroying theists who call in for over 10 years.

 

[joelr]

Regarding the Cross and Atonement, atheistic critical scholar Bart Ehrman writes, “Where do any of the ancient sources speak of a divine man who was crucified as an atonement for sin? So far as I know, there are no parallels to the central Christian claim. What has been invented here is not the Christian Jesus but the mythicist claims about Jesus… The majority of scholars agree… there is no unambiguous evidence that any pagans prior to Christianity believed in dying and rising gods.” He adds, “None of this literature is written by scholars trained in the New Testament.”

Ehrman is an atheist and stidies the NT and Jesus. He is 100% certain that the Gospels are a mythology. He doesn't study Greek religions.

He also won't debate carrier but their exchanges are all written out here:

Ehrman on Historicity Recap • Richard Carrier


What Ehrman does here is ask for a savior demigod who was crucified for his sins (he knows there are dying/rising demigods before Jesus, what do you think Justin Martyr is talking about?)

But he wants one who dies FOR THE SINS OF THE FOLLOWERS.

Well that is a Jewish development. Jesus is a JEWISH VERSION?

NOw about the "no scholars believe in dying and rising Gods" thing. This must be pretty old.


First, I posted about 4 of them in recent posts with original sources. But let's move forward.


“Christianity is not a Jewish religion, it’s a Hellenistic religion.”

“Jesus is of Jewish ethnicity but is telling the story of a Hellenistic deity”

1:57

Carl A. P. Ruck (born December 8, 1935, Bridgeport, Connecticut), is a professor in the Classical Studies department at Boston University. He received his B.A. at Yale University, his M.A. at the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. at Harvard University.


Let's get a bit more current.
List of Historians Who Take Mythicism Seriously

List of Historians Who Take Mythicism Seriously • Richard Carrier



There are legitimate reasons to doubt Jesus existed, even as a mundane man whose legend became exaggerated (which is, definitely, always plausible too). These reasons have survived peer review—twice. And yet a common fallacy deployed against this fact is that “no relevant experts take this seriously.” This is already a fallacy. Once there is a multiply-corroborated peer-reviewed challenge to a consensus, that means it’s substantial enough that the consensus needs to be re-examined on the new evidence and analysis presented. It might survive that examination. But you still have to do it. You can’t just say “no one takes it seriously” as an excuse to not even conduct that examination (see my remarks on this in What I Said at the Brea Conference).



Nevertheless, here I will dispatch the mere premise of this argument, the claim that “no one takes it seriously.” I will maintain here an ongoing list of all those bona fide exerts—scholars with actual and relevant PhDs (many of them even sitting or emeritus professors of the subject)—who do take it seriously. I previously had maintained this list in response to Bart Ehrman’s deployment of this fallacy. But the number of scholars who meet even his absurdly narrow criteria—and even more so any genuinely pertinent criteria—has grown so large it needs its own page now. So here it is.



In the following list I present in bold text those historians who either doubt the historicity of Jesus or have admitted to being agnostic about it (as in, they are unsure whether he existed or not). All the other scholars listed are convinced Jesus existed—they still don’t think “Mythicism” is probable (the idea that Jesus is entirely, and not just partially, mythical)—but they have gone on record admitting that at least some theories of the origin of Christianity without a real Jesus can be plausible enough that the debate is worth taking seriously, and not just dismissed out of hand as crackpot.

1. Thomas Brodie. A now-retired professor of biblical studies who confessed his doubts in Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery (Sheffield Phoenix 2012); see my discussion in Historicity News and Brodie on Jesus.
2. Richard Carrier (myself). An independent scholar with a PhD in ancient history from Columbia University and multiple peer-reviewed publications, including the academic study On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reasons for Doubt (Sheffield Phoenix 2014). My colloquial summary, Jesus from Outer Space, outlines in simple terms the underlying logic of that peer-reviewed study. My anthology Hitler Homer Bible Christ includes all my pertinent peer-reviewed journal articles up to 2014. And my study of the methodology, which was peer-reviewed by professors of both mathematics and biblical studies (a requirement I set in my contract), is Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (Prometheus 2012).
3. Raphael Lataster. An independent scholar with a PhD in religious studies from the University of Sydney, who explained his doubts in his peer-reviewed assessment of the debate in Questioning the Historicity of Jesus (Brill 2019).
4. Robert M. Price. An independent scholar with two pertinent PhDs, in Systematic Theology and New Testament Studies. He has multiple publications explaining his doubts, e.g. The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems (American Atheist 2012).
5. Thomas Thompson. A retired yet renowned professor of biblical studies and second-temple Judaism, who originated the now-consensus doubts about the historicity of Moses and the Patriarchs, and explained his similar doubts about Jesus in The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David (Basic Books 2009) and Is This Not The Carpenter? The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus (Routledge 2017).
6. Philip Davies. A professor of biblical studies (now deceased) with a PhD in the field from Oxford, who publicly argued that doubting historicity was a respectable academic position; and then privately admitted that in fact he actually doubted the historicity of Jesus. This was posthumously confirmed by correspondence with Raphael Lataster and myself (e.g. see Lataster 2019).
7. Hector Avalos. At the time a sitting professor of religion at Iowa State University (now deceased), with a PhD in Hebrew Bible and Near Eastern Studies from Harvard, who declared his agnosticism about historicity to me personally, and then publicly in the Ames Tribune on 2 March 2013.
8. Arthur Droge. A sitting professor of Early Christianity, previously at UC San Diego and later the University of Toronto, with a PhD in the field from the University of Chicago, who explained his agnosticism at the 2008 Amherst conference on the historical Jesus, and in its associated 2009 article for CAESAR, “Jesus and Ned Lud[d]: What’s in a Name?”
9. Carl Ruck. A professor of classical studies at Boston University, with a PhD in ancient literature from Harvard, who confessed his doubts on a Mythvision interview in May 2022 (in minute 31).
10. David Madison. An independent scholar with a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University, who publicly confirmed his agnosticism in Q&A during the GCRR 2021 e Conference on the Historical Jesus.
11. J. Harold Ellens. A professor of Biblical Studies at the Ecumenical Theological Seminary of Detroit (now deceased) with a history of numerous honors, publications, and positions in the field, including a PhD in Second Temple Judaism and Christian Origins from Michigan University. In Sources of the Jesus Tradition (Prometheus 2010) he repeatedly expressed his doubts as to the historical existence of Jesus (see comment for quoted examples).

 

[joelr]

1. 12. Herman Detering. A lifelong pastor and independent scholar with a PhD in theology and New Testament studies under Dr. Walter Schmithals at Humboldt-Universität Berlin. His doctoral dissertation argued that Paul was a rhetorical invention, and though he suspects Jesus existed in some sense, he conceded doubt still needed to be taken seriously.
2. Zeba Crook. A professor of Religious Studies at Carleton University, with a PhD in theology (like Bart Ehrman, and most Biblical scholars nowadays) from St. Michael’s College. He defends the historicity of Jesus but has publicly explained that it’s nevertheless plausible to doubt or debate it (Facebook, 30 December 2017 and 2 January 2018).
3. Kurt Noll. A sitting professor of religion at Brandon University, with a PhD in theology from the Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. He is a historicist who admits it’s nevertheless plausible to theorize Jesus might not have existed, as he explains in a chapter he contributed to Is This Not the Carpenter, “Investigating Earliest Christianity Without Jesus.”
4. Emanuel Pfoh. A sitting professor of history at the National University of La Plata. He is a historicist who admits it’s nevertheless plausible to theorize Jesus might not have existed, as he explains in a chapter he contributed to Is This Not the Carpenter, “Jesus and the Mythic Mind: An Epistemological Problem” (cf. p. 92).
5. James Crossley. A sitting professor of the Bible at St. Mary’s University with a PhD in the field from the University of Nottingham. He is a historicist who nevertheless wrote in the preface to Lataster 2019 that “scepticism about historicity is worth thinking about seriously—and, in light of demographic changes, it might even feed into a dominant position in the near future.”
6. Justin Meggitt. A professor of religion on the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge with a PhD in New Testament Studies from Cambridge. He is a historicist who nevertheless concluded in a 2019 article in New Testament Studies (“‘More Ingenious than Learned’? Examining the Quest for the Non-Historical Jesus”) that questioning historicity “does not belong to the past and nor is it irrational” and it “should not be dismissed with problematic appeals to expertise and authority and nor should it be viewed as unwelcome.”
7. Darren Slade. President of the Global Center for Religious Research, with a Ph.D. in theology and church history. He is a historicist who confirmed to me personally, and publicly at the GCRR 2021 eConference on the Historical Jesus, that questioning historicity nevertheless deserves to hold a respectable place in Jesus studies.
8. Steve Mason. A professor of Ancient Mediterranean Religions and Cultures at the University of Groningen, with a PhD in ancient Judaism from St. Michael’s College. He is a historicist who has published on the historical Jesus but has nevertheless said that serious proposals that Jesus didn’t exist “should be considered and tested,” not rejected out of hand, and that “it may be” that Jesus didn’t exist (Harmonic Atheist, October 2020, at 28:30).
9. Richard C. Miller. An adjunct professor of religious studies at Chapman University, with a Ph.D. in religion from Claremont Graduate University in LA and a prominent peer reviewed monograph in the field: Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity (Routledge 2014). He is a historicist who nevertheless wrote a foreword supporting the Mythicist anthology by John Loftus and Robert Price, The Varieties of Jesus Mythicism: Did He Even Exist? (Hypatia 2021). There he declares there are only two plausible positions in the field now regarding Jesus: that he is entirely a myth, or nothing survives about him but myth.

 

[joelr]

QUOTE="samtonga43, post: 7857860, member: 60153"]

[/QUOTE]

1. 21. John Kloppenborg. A sitting professor at the University of Toronto with a Ph.D. in New Testament Studies. He has remarked that though he sees no reason to doubt the historicity of Jesus, he nevertheless doesn’t think the evidence is conclusive enough to render doubt preposterous (Mythvision, August 2022, minutes 7:30-11:00).
2. Tom Dykstra. An independent scholar with a Ph.D. in the History of Renaissance Christianity who has nevertheless published peer reviewed works in New Testament studies. He is a historicist who nevertheless grants the plausibility of the mythicist position in a 2015 article for the Journal of the OCABS (“Ehrman and Brodie on Whether Jesus Existed: A Cautionary Tale about the State of Biblical Scholarship”). See my article Dykstra on Ehrman & Brodie.
3. Francesca Stavrakopoulou. A professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter. She’s said the historicity of Jesus is only “possible” and not certain. Which means she either agrees mythicism is plausible, and thus debatable, or she is even an outright agnostic (Twitter October 2016).
4. Burton Mack. A renowned professor in Early Christianity at the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California (now deceased), with a PhD in the field from the University of Göttingen. In a chapter he wrote for an anthology edited by Jacob Neusner, The Christian and Judaic Invention of History (Oxford University 1990) Mack recommends that experts pay more attention to Mythicist work (naming G.A. Wells specifically). Though Mack says it lies on the “fringes of the discipline,” he mentions it specifically as among things the field should be taking more note of (p. 24).
5. Robert Funk. Though now deceased, his career included being a professor at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, executive secretary of the Society of Biblical Literature, and chairman of the graduate department of religion at Vanderbilt University (from which he also received his PhD in the field). In his article on “The Resurrection of Jesus” for The Fourth R 8.1 (1995), p. 9, Funk declares the existence of Jesus probable, but says, nevertheless, “I do not know for certain that Jesus really existed, that he is anything more than the figment of some overactive imaginations.”
6. Gerd Lüdemann. Was a professor of New Testament at multiple universities and before his retirement held numerous prominent positions in the field, with an extensive publication record and doctorates in theology and New Testament from the University of Göttingen. In Jesus Mythicism: An Introduction by Minas Papageorgiou, when asked about it Lüdemann says that, although he is still convinced Jesus existed in some sense, “I do admire Arthur Drews and the Christ Myth theory is a serious hypothesis about the origins of Christianity.”

Which makes twenty–six relevantly qualified experts now who concur mythicism is at least plausible. Half of them are even outright doubters. There are surely many others who simply haven’t gone on the record—just like Davies, who feared backlash from admitting his doubt publicly while alive. If you find public statements placing any more scholars in either category, do let me know in comments below. Though please note that only scholars with relevant PhDs are to be listed here.

Was Christianity Copied from Pagan Myths? | Evidence Unseen

Yes, you already posted this drivel from the apologist and theologian. Would you like me to debunk this entire article?

 

[joelr]

Regarding the Cross and Atonement, atheistic critical scholar Bart Ehrman writes, “Where do any of the ancient sources speak of a divine man who was crucified as an atonement for sin? So far as I know, there are no parallels to the central Christian claim. What has been invented here is not the Christian Jesus but the mythicist claims about Jesus… T

Carrier's. response to Ehrman saying this nonsense -

Every dying-and-rising god is different. Every death is different. Every resurrection is different. All irrelevant. The commonality is that there is a death and a resurrection. Everything else is a mixture of syncretized ideas from the borrowing and borrowed cultures, to produce a new and unique god and myth. In my article on virgin births, I also mentioned this about resurrected gods, with citations of all the evidence I already published under peer review in On the Historicity of Jesus (pp. 45-47, 56-58, 98-100, 105-06, 168-73, 225-29). I also list and discuss a lot of the evidence and theology of resurrection in the world Christianity was born from and in full knowledge of—both Jewish and Pagan—in Not the Impossible Faith (Chapter 3). But on my blog, in the same paragraph, I also mentioned Derreck Bennett’s article, “Ehrman Errs: Yes, Bart, There Were Dying & Rising Gods,” as making a start on showing this. Though I said I felt there were some errors in that, and that I’d write about this myself someday to shore up the facts and get them as right as possible, the same way I did for the virgin birth concept. Well, here we go.

 

[joelr]

Regarding the Cross and Atonement, atheistic critical scholar Bart Ehrman writes, “Where do any of the ancient sources speak of a divine man who was crucified as an atonement for sin? So far as I know, there are no parallels to the central Christian claim. What has been invented here is not the Christian Jesus but the mythicist claims about Jesus…

Ehrman Errs: Yes, Bart, There Were Dying & Rising Gods
Ehrman, Interrupted: The Risen Osiris

One of the key points in this debate is whether Jesus was modeled after a dying and rising god archetype. This is the contention of most mythicists, including Dr. Price, and it is the point that I wish to address here. Such an archetype, in and of itself, does not preclude the historical existence of Jesus. It’s possible that Jesus did exist, and that he was simply deified in accordance with this mythic template. Mythicism, naturally, entails many more factors for consideration, but this is one of the most important. According to Bart Ehrman, however, mythicists are fooling themselves on this point. The following video features Ehrman’s “rebuttal” of Dr. Price, et al., on the matter.
I will now tackle each of Ehrman’s points, one by one. His arguments are, to use his own words, “problematic up and down the line.” Beginning with the preeminent dying and rising god of ancient Egypt, Osiris:

All you have to do is read the ancient sources on Osiris. The most famous one is Plutarch, who has a very lengthy essay on Isis and Osiris … It’s true that Osiris gets killed. What is not true is that he gets raised from the dead. He doesn’t get raised from the dead! When Jesus gets raised from the dead, his body comes back to life and he comes out of the tomb and he ascends to heaven. Osiris stayed dead. His body was entombed, and there were various places, according to Plutarch, where different people, different locales, argued that his body was entombed, and they built shrines to this dead body. The body stayed dead. Now Osiris himself, his soul, lived on in the underworld. He became the king of the underworld. But his body did not come back to life. So he wasn’t resurrected from the dead. His body stayed dead. That’s very different from the Christian doctrine of the resurrection, which is that Jesus’ body came back from the dead.

I have read the ancient sources on Osiris. While the 2nd century historian, Plutarch, may be our principal source on the story, he is far from being our only source. Consider the following texts:

Osiris! look! Osiris! listen! Arise! Live again! (Pyr. 258 ff.)

Osiris! thou wert gone, but thou hast returned; thou didst sleep, but thou hast been awakened; thou didst die, but thou livest again! (Pyr. 1004 ff.)

The ancient Egyptian sources are quite clear: Osiris died, but he has risen, and he lives again. Plutarch, equally, speaks of Osiris’ “revivification and regenesis,” though it is possible that, as a Middle Platonist, Plutarch regarded this as a spiritual resurrection, only. Among the philosophers and the elite in the Greco-Roman world, a disembodied soul was the preferred state of immortality. But this was not the common view in antiquity, much less of the ancient Egyptians. As comparative religion scholar S.G.F. Brandon relates, Osiris’ resurrection was “conceived of in completely materialistic terms, involving the use of a reconstituted physical body.” [2] The pyramidal texts reveal an emphasis on the corporeal reconstitution of the god, confirming Brandon’s claim:

“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, for I am as Horus his avenger, I have smitten for thee him who smote thee…raise thyself up, king, Osiris; thou livest!” (1684a-1685a and 1700 = Utterance 606; cf. also 670)

“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!” (207b-209a and 2010b-2011a = Utterance 676)

Granted Osiris becomes king of the afterworld rather than taking up an earthly sojourn, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs state that Osiris was initially raised on earth, after which he ascended upon a ladder to heaven. [3] As we shall see, the same was originally believed of Jesus.

It is true that Plutarch mentions tombs of Osiris, and we find the existence of such tombs in ancient Egypt, as well. What this demonstrates is a diversity of ideas within ancient religious and philosophical traditions. For some, Osiris’s body remained entombed, though it would still be subject to reanimation, as was the case for all ancient Egyptians. [4] For others, as the sources above illustrate, he rose from the dead and bodily ascended to heaven. Such diversity was prominent also in early Christianity, as Bart Ehrman can certainly attest. Docetist Christians, for example, never conceived of a dying and rising Christ; he could not be put to death in the flesh, as he was a spiritual, not a physical, entity. Christianity had no uniformity until Catholic orthodoxy prevailed in the 4th century, stomping out and labeling all other views as “heresy.” Such diversity of ideas can still be gleaned, however, within the canon of the New Testament (just pit Paul against Matthew on whether the Mosaic Law still applies, etc.), and persists, even to this day, in the multitude of Christian denominations throughout the world.
Now, let’s circle back to something that Ehrman said earlier in the podcast:

I would like Bob to give a single reference from any Jew living anywhere within 200 years of Jesus who mentions the Osiris myth.

Ehrman wishes to establish that Jews from around the era would have had no familiarity with Osiris, much less dying and rising gods. But that is incredibly unlikely. Osiris had long been known in Palestine. Archaeological excavations reveal his presence there, and even scripture alludes to knowledge of him, e.g., the resurrection imagery of bones rejoining in Ezekiel 37, Psalm 78’s narrative parallels with an early Hymn to Osiris, etc. [5] [6] No surprise there, given that Egypt ruled Canaan from as far back as 3,000 BCE.

Early Christianity’s major centers of growth and development were in places like Alexandria and Antioch, home to Hellenized, Greek-speaking Jews who would’ve been all too familiar with Greco-Roman and Egyptian myths. Many of them may have embraced such myths, as 2 Maccabees informs us of “an extreme of Hellenization and increase in the adoption of foreign ways” (4:13). Ehrman is essentially foisting an argument from ignorance. We don’t need explicit mention of Osiris by any Jew from the period in order to be reasonably certain that his myth was known to them.

 

[joelr]

Regarding the Cross and Atonement, atheistic critical scholar Bart Ehrman writes, “Where do any of the ancient sources speak of a divine man who was crucified as an atonement for sin? So far as I know, there are no parallels to the central Christian claim. What has been invented here is not the Christian Jesus but the mythicist claims about Jesus…

cont...
Bart Ehrman’s attempt to minimize the relevance of the Osiris myth seems especially dubious in the face of what I consider to be the most salient point on the matter: Soteriology. What is eerily similar between Osiris and Christ is what their resurrections achieve for their devotees. In both cases, the resurrection of the godman is the conduit through which mortal men can conquer death and live eternally. [7] As Christ was raised, so too are Christians. As Osiris was raised, so too are his followers. By ritual identification with the risen god, one can be spiritually renewed, walking in newness of life (Met. 11.21-23; cf. Ro. 6:3-5). Both Jesus and Osiris ascend to heaven, where they take up their throne as Ruler and Judge. Both offer their body and blood in the sacrament of bread and wine. [8] [9] The similarities, in terms of theological function, are so staggering, they can only be the product of cultural diffusion and religious syncretism.
Ehrman continues by adamantly denying any “common motif in pagan religions of a god who dies and gets raised from the dead.”

We don’t have evidence that pagans believed in a dying and rising god at all … with respect to the pagan myths, there simply is no plausible parallel to the idea of a divine being who dies and is raised bodily, physically, from the dead. You just don’t have any instances of dying and rising gods. This idea of a dying and rising god started being made popular … in the early 20th century … More recent scholarship over the last twenty years has shown that in fact that’s bogus, that in fact there are not instances of this. And if you actually press a mythicist to give you an example, they give you examples like Bob Price just gave of Osiris, which is definitely not a case of somebody being raised from the dead.

Osiris we’ve just covered, and the ancient sources most certainly convey a bodily resurrection from the dead, with salvific significance like that of Christ’s, to boot. Before we launch into a survey of other notable dying and rising gods, let’s look first at the earliest depiction of Jesus’ resurrection in the New Testament. In Iesus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God, M. David Litwa explains:

…in early Christian texts we read that after Jesus’ death, God “highy exalted” him (Phil. 2:8-9), and seated him “in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:20) at the “right hand of God” (1 Pet. 3:21-22). In his monograph on Jesus’ ascent, A.W. Zwiep comments that “the general conviction in the earliest Christian preaching” is that “as of the day of his resurrection Jesus was in heaven, seated at the right hand of God.” This is assumed, notably, in Luke 23:43, where Jesus says to the thief: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Indeed, says Zwiep, resurrection and exaltation were regarded as two sides of the same coin; resurrection meant “resurrection to heaven.” [10]

The earliest New Testament texts make Jesus’ resurrection and ascension a synonymous event. Christian apologists attempt to counter this by appealing to the list of appearances in 1 Cor. 15:3-8, though critical scholars have shown that the appearances most likely represent visionary experiences of the heavenly Christ, like that of Paul’s, not an earthly sojourn. [11] There doesn’t appear to be any tradition of Jesus walking the earth after his resurrection until decades later, beginning with the Gospel of Mark. Prior to that, however, Jesus was raised to heaven, and “appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection” (Ro. 1:4). As Paul has it, Jesus achieved divine status upon his resurrection/ascension–what scholars refer to as an apotheosis (to become a god). According to ancient sources, the same was believed of several other, notable figures. If the earliest depiction of Christ’s bodily exaltation to heaven qualifies as a resurrection, then so do theirs.


Asclepius, Heracles, and Romulus

The Greek physician Asclepius healed the lame, the blind, and the paralytic, and raised the dead (First Apology, 22:6). Zeus struck Asclepius down for bringing forth too many resurrectees, but later raised him from the dead to become an immortal god (Autol. 1.13; Dial. Mort. 13.1).

The second-century Christian apologist Theophilus of Antioch affirms that Asclepius “was raised” [using the same Greek word as that used] for the resurrection of Jesus in Matt. 16:21; Mark 14:28; Luke 24:6 [etc.] … Out of mercy, says Lucian, Zeus raised Asclepius not just to a normal human life, but made him participate in immortality … Justin Martyr apparently understands Asclepius’ resurrection to involve a simultaneous
Heracles (variously known as Hercules) suffered and died upon a funerary pyre, after which he was bodily raised to heaven, leaving not a trace of his mortal remains behind. In the 1st century play Hercules Oetaeus, Hercules appears to his weeping mother Alcmene following his death and apotheosis. He tells her to refrain from mourning, that he has been “granted [his] place in heaven” among the gods (1940-43; cf. John 20:11-15).

A series of Attic and Apulian vases appearing from about 420 BCE show Heracles being bodily carried away to Olympus from his pyre … That Heracles was actually bodily removed from his pyre is also suggested by Diodorus of Sicily, who has Heracles’ companions search for the bones of the hero after his cremation–to no avail (Bibl. Hist. 4.38.5). Heracles’ body is gone, because it has ascended to the divine realm, leaving no remainder (cf. Jesus’ empty tomb). [13]

After Romulus, first king of Rome, was raised from the dead to become the god Quirinus, he appeared before Proculus to deliver a great commission: “Go, and declare to the Romans the will of heaven that my Rome shall be the capital of the world” (Livy, Hist. 1.16.2-8; cf. Mt. 28:16-20).

Romulus departed from this mortal life and was transformed into an immortal, transcendent being. His metamorphosis was simultaneously an ascent to heaven … Ancient authors agree … that Romulus’ body did disappear. The mortal remains, for those who believed in his ascent, were taken up and transformed for celestial life. On this point, Tertullian explicitly compares Romulus and Jesus: both were “encompassed with a cloud and taken up to heaven” (Apol. 21.23; cf. Acts 1:9-11). For Tertullian’s comparison to work, Romulus must have been taken up bodily, like Jesus. [14]

skip over several Gods,


Conclusion

Bart Ehrman is a top-notch New Testament scholar and textual critic. There is no denying either his brilliance or his contribution to the field of New Testament studies. However, in assessing the claims of mythicists, and scholars of comparative religion in general, he seems to have stepped well outside of his area of expertise. Despite Ehrman’s adamant claims to the contrary, there were dying and rising gods, as well as mythic figures like Romulus and Asclepius who were divinized upon their resurrection, like Jesus in the earliest New Testament texts. They rose physically, not merely spiritually, leaving not a trace of their bodies behind. Osiris is certainly to be counted among them, as ancient Egyptian texts and relevant scholarship make abundantly clear. And the scholarship on these matters is not outdated; Litwa’s work in Iesus Deus, for instance, was published a mere few years ago.

Bart Ehrman writes and lectures about the diversity within early Christianity, in such works as Lost Christianities and The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. He knows, as well as anyone, that emerging orthodoxy supplanted and effaced all other opposing views. In a strange twist of irony, Ehrman himself has become the champion of The New Orthodoxy within New Testament scholarship, railing against any views that aren’t represented by “mainstream, biblical scholarship.” But mainstream, biblical scholarship still lies on the conservative end of the spectrum for a reason: Because evangelical Christianity still exerts a mighty influence within the halls of academia. And, there, the fashionable opinions of mainstream scholars matter more than what the ancient sources themselves have to say. True discovery must recede behind the dominating shadow of the status quo. This is why independent scholars like Robert Price, Richard Carrier, David Fitzgerald, etc. are the true heroes. They don’t give a damn about the status quo. They’re not in it to be “mainstream.” They’re following the evidence wherever it leads them. They, like me, are only interested in pursuing the truth.

 

[nPeace]

@samtonga43 man, I hope you have the stomach to read through all that.
Welcome to the world of joelr. LOL

 

[samtonga43]

@samtonga43 man, I hope you have the stomach to read through all that.
Welcome to the world of joelr. LOL

Yes, I get the impression that joel is quite immature. He has discovered Carrierism and is besotted with the guy. This would account for all the ‘yawns’, ‘oopses’, ‘apologetics is crank’, ‘????????????’ (ad infinitum), and his other jejune 'insults'.

Much of the info. he copy/pastes is false. For example, he describes Moreland as an 'amateur.' Straw men, rash generalizations and other logical fallacies are scattered randomly through his posts.

As I said, no matter how much I try, I can’t take him seriously.
But he is young and obviously has a lot to learn. There is hope!

 

[joelr]

@samtonga43 man, I hope you have the stomach to read through all that.
Welcome to the world of joelr. LOL

I know it's hard to stomach historical scholarship, especially after reading crank history from a chemistry teacher who writes apologetics. But it's information debunking all the mistakes made by the amateur apologist. If it turns your stomach then by all means skip it. It's there for anyone who cares about things that are actually true. This might explain the ill feeling you get, things that are true may not agree with you.

He is free to point out mistakes and source them, so we can all learn something new. But it seems with fundamentalists that isn't how it works. It isn't the world of joelr, it's the world of searching for the truth. Also known as open mindedness. Anyway, continue with your ad-hom, peer-pressure to silence and personal attacks on people who attempt to source a rational argument with established facts and debunk obvious lies by apologists.

 

[joelr]

Yes, I get the impression that joel is quite immature.

Wow what a surprise, ad-hom after getting your attempt at "facts"completely debunked. Your last post contained 3 serious errors of misinformation. So I set the facts straight. So immature right?

He has discovered Carrierism and is besotted with the guy. This would account for all the ‘yawns’, ‘oopses’, ‘apologetics is crank’, ‘????????????’ (ad infinitum), and his other jejune 'insults'.

Right, OR maybe could it be all the errors and literal lies in just 2 apologetics articles you posted? Yeah it's not that (completely sourced and debunked), it's not that I gave that information to prove what I was saying is true. It's that I'm "besotted".
I knew after I demonstrated those ridiculous lies in the apologetics article you would probably start with ad-hom. I knew the minute you decided to engage with "facts" that support you that it was going to be apologetics and old bad information and when I showed this you would get b-hurt.
And of course I'm the immature one.........

Much of the info. he copy/pastes is false. For example, he describes Moreland as an 'amateur.' Straw men, rash generalizations and other logical fallacies are scattered randomly through his posts.

He is an amateur historian and the majority of his statements were wrong. This is all just a really sore losers way of admitting defeat. I gave no straw men or any other fallacy, I provided the proper counter information to the ridiculous statements made by Moreland. Funny you can't seem to point out any examples. Your only point is that I called him an amateur. Except I explained why his historical statements were wrong, at least some of them.

Now is when you source some historians that show I'm wrong or admit defeat. Clearly you have done the 2nd but hid behind false accusations ad name calling.

Please show me which information I copy/paste is incorrect.

As I said, no matter how much I try, I can’t take him seriously.
But he is young and obviously has a lot to learn. There is hope!

And complete lies that attempt to take the attention away from the fact that your "sources" got smoked and you seem to have no response except to end with a big red herring.
You can't take me seriously except most of my posts are just sourcing PhD scholars?
I have a lot to learn except you posted 1 amateur apologist and one apologist full of incorrect statements, which I largely corrected with sources. But it's me who needs to learn? And even weirder is you can't seem to tell me what that is?
But yes there is hope. Hope that someone will see your red herring ending and forget how miserable the "facts" you provided were.

 

[joelr]

Much of the info. he copy/pastes is false. For example, he describes Moreland as an 'amateur.' Straw men, rash generalizations and other logical fallacies are scattered randomly through his posts.

Everything he says can be debunked by historical information.
Let's look at one argument with 4 points.
Moreland -
"
Arguments Supporting Eyewitness Influence"
Several reasons can be offered for trusting these claims. First, as Gottschalk reminds us, a document should be assumed trustworthy unless, under burden of proof, it is shown to be unreliable.


"So we know Luke is making a lot of things up in order to deliberately sell a fake history, for purposes of winning an argument against doubters (both within and without Christianity, as his opponents included, for example, Christians with very different ideas about the nature of the resurrection).

This already warns us not to trust anything he has added to the story found in Mark and Matthew: we should assume it is, like those, a convenient fabrication invented for some purpose, unless we can find sufficient evidence to believe otherwise. .....

despite his pretense at being a historian, preface and all, Luke's methods are demonstrably nonhistorical: he is not doing research, weighing facts, checking them against independent sources, and writing down what he thinks most likely happened.He is simply producing an expanded and redacted literary hybird of a couple of previous religious novels (Matthew and Mark), each itself even more obviously constructed according to literary conventions rather than historiographical.

Unlike other historians of even his own era, Luke never names his sources or explains why we are to trust them (or why he did), or how he chose what to include or exclude. In fact Luke does not even declare any critical method at all, but rather insists he slavishly followed what was handed to him - yet another claim we know to be a lie (since we have two of his sources and can confirm he freely altered then to suit his own agenda)."

Carrier

Second, such a presumption of truthtelling is especially strong if the eyewitness passes these tests: he is able to tell the truth, he is willing to do so, he is accurately reported, and there is external corroboration of his testimony


No historian ever confirmed seeing Jesus, only Christians who followed the Gospels



Third, the presence of adverse eyewitnesses would have hampered the spread of Christianity. Christianity began, and remained for sometime, in the same area where Jesus had ministered. If the early portrait of him was untrue, how could the apostles have succeeded there? Why would they have begun there in the first place?

The same way every religion ever started? A bunch of people claimed to have been visited by a deity. It's never been true and no evidence that this time it's true.




Fourth, if the New Testament picture of Jesus was not based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, how could a consistent tradition about him ever have been formed and written?

again, historian specializing on the NT

Mark composed his mythical tale of Jesus using many different sources: most definitely the Septuagint, possibly even Homer, and, here we can see, probably also Paul’s Epistles. From these, and his own creative impulses, he weaved together a coherent string of implausible tales in which neither people nor nature behave the way they would in reality, each and every one with allegorical meaning or missionary purpose. Once we account for all this material, there is very little left. In fact, really, nothing left.

We have very good evidence for all these sources. For example, that Mark emulates stories and lifts ideas from the Psalms, Deuteronomy, the Kings literature, and so on, is well established and not rationally deniable. That he likewise lifts from and riffs on Paul’s Epistles is, as you can now see, fairly hard to deny. By contrast, we have exactly no evidence whatever that anything in Mark came to him by oral tradition. It is thus curious that anyone still assumes some of it did. That Mark’s sources and methods were literary is well proved. That any of his sources or methods were oral in character is, by contrast, a baseless presumption. "

How much did Mark take from Paul? A lot -

Mark's Use of Paul's Epistles • Richard Carrier

This is not Carrier's work, this is based on:

• Michael Bird & Joel Willitts, Paul and the Gospels: Christologies, Conflicts and Convergences (T&T Clark 2011)
• David Oliver Smith, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul: The Influence of the Epistles on the Synoptic Gospels (Resource 2011)
• Tom Dykstra, Mark: Canonizer of Paul (OCABS 2012)
• Oda Wischmeyer & David Sim, eds., Paul and Mark: Two Authors at the Beginnings of Christianity (de Gruyter 2014)
• Eve-Marie Becker et al., Mark and Paul: For and Against Pauline Influence on Mark (de Gruyter 2014)
• Thomas Nelligan, The Quest for Mark’s Sources: An Exploration of the Case for Mark’s Use of First Corinthians (Pickwick 2015)

 

[joelr]

Yes, I get the impression that joel is quite immature. He has discovered Carrierism and is besotted with the guy.

Except I sourced Francesca Stavrakopoulou several times. Thomas Thompson, Goodacre on the Synoptic Problem, but I digress, it's pointless to talk rational when someone is resorting to 5th grade debate tactics..."wow are you like, in love with the guy?...." brilliant.

 

[joelr]

Much of the info. he copy/pastes is false.

Now, please show me which information I copy/paste is incorrect. Not a statement I made about an apologist (which isn't even copy/paste so was a terrible example)but actual copy/paste.