I dont agree. Plus thats a blanket accusation. They do answer there critics.
You just accused me of a blanket accusation then made a blanket accusation.
I don't need blanket statement, so far all of the apologetics you linked to were wrong. One was so under-researched it's wouldn't be wrong to call it an actual lie.
Bart ehrman is not a christian apologist. He dont believe in the resurrection or virgin birth or miracles. Hes not a christian. So, he has no agenda in saying the story of Jesus was not barrowed from pagan sources. I could understand you calling a christian apologist biased in saying the story was not taken from pagans, but bart saying it? No, thats not biased. But, even with bias, people make points that need counters.
Ehrman is a biblical scholar and he believes what most scholars believe, that Jesus was a man and the supernatural stories were added later. That's what educated people currently believe.
With the exception of a few fundamentalist scholars who can't let go of their superstitious beliefs.
Carriers work is more recent and has exposed many of the assumptions scholars held about Jesus to be assumptions based on false premises. But Carriers work hasn't become the standard view in the field yet. It probably will.
Ehrman USES crappy apologetics in his writing and Carrier exposes many of his lies:
"Bart Ehrman is one of those secular historians who, all too often, can’t be bothered to check his facts, but just repeatedly apes Christian apologetics, again and again, on both the dying-and-rising mytheme"
So carrier has no beliefs or biases, he purely goes only by all facts huh? I could not disagree more. I disagree with that so strongly that i wont even debate that line.
Because you can't debate that line.
Carrier says many times that someone once preached some Jesus to him and decided to read the bible for himself. Then he became interested in the historical aspect. He allowed the work to inform his ideas on the religion, not personal beliefs.
If he says mithras wasnt a savior deity, thats good. Hopefully he did so not because of his cretics but because of accuracy.
See one minute you are saying "I could not disagree more. I disagree with that so strongly" implying that you are very familiar with Carrier but obviously you're not?
So you're just talking out of your a$$.
Carrier not only debunked the mis-information about Mithras but also many other crank theories about the NT such as the "Q" gospel and the theory that Jesus was one of the Ceasars from Rome.
He's also very critical of some other amateur mythicists like D.M. Murdock who has made some historical errors.
So if he makes errors write him off, but if carrier makes errors its a pass. Got it. Ill try to figure that one out.
As far as I can tell there was some historical information Carrier had not yet learned when he wrote those older articles.
Heres the difference between something being outdated and just plain wrong.
Carriers work cited some sources, those sources never get UPDATED because there ancient, they never change. So if the said source dont have in it what he says, that means wrong, not outdated.
The sources were not wrong, the apologetics wasn't using the same sources.
Carrier makes mistakes, if you read through his blog he has lots of corrections and he also answers every single critic of his work on his blog.
Every error someone points out he writes about explaining how he wasnt' really wrong or if he was he admits it.
He is a historian not a religious person. His truth can change with new knowledge.
Any original source where a god dies for its peoples sins?
Yes other demigods died for salvation.
Your using a common apologetics point and it's one of the worst arguments ever.
First, so many other elements match up that who cares?
But the real problem is that the whole "sin" thing is mainly a Jewish thing. So of course the Jewish version would die for personal sins. Jesus replaced Yom Kippur which was about forgiving sins.
Judaism is the religion that teaches people are born into sin. Christians now are so brainwashed they don't even question the concept, it seems perfectly natural.
Like - hey everyone is a sinner from birth but luckily our religion fixes everything!
Whatever.
Jesus’s death and resurrection is a singular apocalyptic event rather than part of an eternal cycle…because that’s the Jewish contribution fused to the dying-and-rising motif. It’s
exactly how a dying-and-rising god would be Judaized. Likewise the role of sacrificial-atonement blood-magic in framing his death, which is exactly a replication of Jewish temple atonement magic (Jesus thus
becomes the Yom Kippur: e.g.
OHJ, Element 18, pp. 143-45; pp. 402-07; etc.), foundational to Jewish soteriology. So we can already expect
that in the creation of any Jewish savior cult, as well. Meanwhile the Hellenistic contributions include the role of Jesus as incarnated divine being (and thus demigod and not fully human), in this respect most closely modeling Romulus (who was also a pre-existent celestial who assumed a mortal body; and in myth, even born to a human woman), but as we’ve seen, many other resurrected mortals and demigods abounded to inspire the same concept. Likewise, the abandonment of the communal agricultural context and its replacement with an interpretation of future individual salvation, is exactly what happened to many other resurrected gods (such as Osiris and Adonis) precisely in consequence of the influence of the Hellenistic mystery religions."
But individual salvation is exactly the same thing as getting rid of "sins".
Why did the NT give credit to the OT alot then? It never says "and the egyptian book of the dead says thus and thus!".
I think we are past this. You already know this.
No mythology credits older mythology, ever. Buddhism clearly rose out of Hinduism as people traded cultures between India and China. Buddhist text don't SAY THAT?!?
Egyptiaqns don't say they stole myths from the Sumerians.
No, its not the end. Your still missing my point. I could tell you my day, or life, in detail and you could tell me yours and there would be quite ALOT thats similar. But it would mean nothing.
Still with this? Yes there would be similarities like, eating, driving, going to work, and dance marathons.
NOT virgin births and being killed and coming back to life and getting everyone into heaven and having super powers. Never. That never happens.
Did you die and come back to life in 3 days? Yes? Oh me too!? Wait, you're the son of god too, wow, our days are so similar!
You dont know that it was taken from the other. And theres no direct proof of that. The NT never gives direct credit to egyptian sources for instance. Of course it talks about egypt, yea, but thats all it does.
Please stop pretending to think that religions ever give credit to the myths they steal from. They never do.
If I made up a thing where a fat guy with a white beard rides a sleigh from the south pole and gives presents to children every July there would be no direct proof of where I got this idea.
Similarities dont even prove satan copied God/prophesies, So, niether would they prove christianity copied pagan cultures. Again, our lives are similar. Theres similarities in everything around us, not just our lives.
Yes OUR lives are similar. Demi-gods with super powers who come back from the dead and cause earthquakes and a zombie apocalypse to happen, that isn't us.
That never happened in anyone's day. That happened in fiction.
And any written stories about it are fiction.
How can you go on comparing average people to the lives of demigods?????
That is so bizarre?
The christian story is true and a part of the former jewish story taken from the OT. How you choose to deal with this or ignore this or use denial on this is your choice.
And Thor is real and he flies around with the help of his magic hammer. Probably Hercules too.