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

[Skywalker]

This is a logical fallacy. You used a false dichotomy. Neither needs to be "more believable". They can both be wrong.




That is one strange version of Christianity you are talking about.

What evidence is that that Christians made up the stories to fit the prophecies? That Christian beliefs are similar to Jewish beliefs, regarding the second coming of the Messiah, shows that their beliefs are scriptural enough not to be fabrications.

 

[Skywalker]

Do you ever listen to yourself?

Being fully God and fully human is different from being half god half human.

 

[Skywalker]

I repeat; if jesus came from a mortal woman he was part human. If he was impregnated by the holy spirit he was part god. That makes him a demi-god just like hercules. Jupiter impregnated a mortal woman just like god impregnated mary, a mortal woman. They're peas in a pod.

Horus was not born of a virgin. https://crossexamined.org/72390-2/

Claim: Horus was conceived by a virgin mother named Meri, and had a stepfather named Seb (Joseph)
Truth: Horus was NOT conceived of a virgin.

There is no evidence of three wise men as part of the Horus story at all. Seb was actually the “earth god”; He was not Horus’ earthly father. Seb is not the equivalent of Joseph and, in most cases, Seb is described as Osiris’ father.

 

[Subduction Zone]

What evidence is that that Christians made up the stories to fit the prophecies? That Christian beliefs are similar to Jewish beliefs, regarding the second coming of the Messiah, shows that their beliefs are scriptural enough not to be fabrications.

Will you pay attention this time if I do so?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Horus was not born of a virgin. https://crossexamined.org/72390-2/

When you use biased and dishonest sites you are saying that you are wrong. See what the sites that are neutral say.

Simply search for "Horus". Avoid Christian sites. Avoid sites that are openly atheist. For example Wikipedia:

"Horus was born to the goddess Isis after she retrieved all the dismembered body parts of her murdered husband Osiris, except his penis, which was thrown into the Nile and eaten by a catfish,[8][9] or sometimes depicted as instead by a crab, and according to Plutarch's account used her magic powers to resurrect Osiris and fashion a phallus[10] to conceive her son (older Egyptian accounts have the penis of Osiris surviving).

After becoming pregnant with Horus, Isis fled to the Nile Delta marshlands to hide from her brother Set, who jealously killed Osiris and who she knew would want to kill their son.[11] There Isis bore a divine son, Horus."

Horus - Wikipedia

Technically that could be said to be a virgin birth. Osiris's fun stick was gone.

 

[Skywalker]

When you use biased and dishonest sites you are saying that you are wrong. See what the sites that are neutral say.

Simply search for "Horus". Avoid Christian sites. Avoid sites that are openly atheist. For example Wikipedia:

"Horus was born to the goddess Isis after she retrieved all the dismembered body parts of her murdered husband Osiris, except his penis, which was thrown into the Nile and eaten by a catfish,[8][9] or sometimes depicted as instead by a crab, and according to Plutarch's account used her magic powers to resurrect Osiris and fashion a phallus[10] to conceive her son (older Egyptian accounts have the penis of Osiris surviving).

After becoming pregnant with Horus, Isis fled to the Nile Delta marshlands to hide from her brother Set, who jealously killed Osiris and who she knew would want to kill their son.[11] There Isis bore a divine son, Horus."

Horus - Wikipedia

Technically that could be said to be a virgin birth. Osiris's fun stick was gone.

That is not a virgin birth because it was sexual.

 

[Subduction Zone]

That is not a virgin birth because it was sexual.

So what? If two lesbians had a baby without a man present that could be called a "virgin birth" too. And how do you know that God and Mary did not make the beast with two backs?

 

[Skywalker]

Will you pay attention this time if I do so?

I don't think the Christian beliefs were so different from Jewish beliefs and so distant from the scriptures that they had to be fabrications, but I'm willing to pay attention to if you think there are other reasons they rewrote the Bible to fir the prophecies.

 

[Skywalker]

So what? If two lesbians had a baby without a man present that could be called a "virgin birth" too. And how do you know that God and Mary did not make the beast with two backs?

That situation still involves sperm and eggs-not a supernatural birth. Why is the Virgin Birth so important? | GotQuestions.org

Answer: The doctrine of the virgin birth is crucially important (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23; Luke 1:27, 34). First, let’s look at how Scripture describes the event. In response to Mary’s question, “How will this be?” (Luke 1:34), Gabriel says, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35). The angel encourages Joseph to not fear marrying Mary with these words: “What is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20). Matthew states that the virgin “was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:18). Galatians 4:4 also teaches the Virgin Birth: “God sent His Son, born of a woman.”

From these passages, it is certainly clear that Jesus’ birth was the result of the Holy Spirit working within Mary’s body. The immaterial (the Spirit) and the material (Mary’s womb) were both involved. Mary, of course, could not impregnate herself, and in that sense she was simply a “vessel.” Only God could perform the miracle of the Incarnation.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

I don't think the Christian beliefs were so different from Jewish beliefs and so distant from the scriptures that they had to be fabrications, but I'm willing to pay attention to if you think there are other reasons they rewrote the Bible to fir the prophecies.

You're missing the point, Skywalker. Nothing was REWRITTEN. The OT texts upon which the supposed prophecies come from were always there. They had nothing to do with Jesus. They had to do with people and events going on at the time they were written. The gospel writers writers merely mined them for key words and phrases like "king who will rule my people" or "he is homely and of no beauty" and incorporated these verses into their Jesus story calling him someone no one would think beautiful but would be a king of Israel. This king of israel had to be a future event since Jesus wasn't king while alive so they designed the story for a future millennial rule over all the earth way way way into the future sometime.

 

[Skywalker]

No, no one said that it was a copy of Zoroaster. That is the claim of only those trying to dishonestly argue against stories being borrowed from other myths.

Once again, let's say that you copy from a friends test in school. You only copied half of it. Did you still cheat?

The parallel of Jesus being hidden as a baby doesn't mean that it was copied from Zoroaster any more than the story of Harry Potter was copied from Jesus.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Horus was not born of a virgin. https://crossexamined.org/72390-2/

Hercules was. His legend was around hundreds of years before Jesus. Very plausible the gospel writers fashioned Jesus' birth after the Hercules myth.

 

[Skywalker]

You're missing the point, Skywalker. Nothing was REWRITTEN. The OT texts upon which the supposed prophecies come from were always there. They had nothing to do with Jesus. They had to do with people and events going on at the time they were written. The gospel writers writers merely mined them for key words and phrases like "king who will rule my people" or "he is homely and of no beauty" and incorporated these verses into their Jesus story calling him someone no one would think beautiful but would be a king of Israel. This king of israel had to be a future event since Jesus wasn't king while alive so they designed the story for a future millennial rule over all the earth way way way into the future sometime.

Jesus being the king of Israel was supposed to be a future event. It wasn't supposed to happen during the first advent of Jesus.

 

[sojourner]

He was showing the humanity of Jesus. That doesn't detract from Jesus being fully God and fully human.

Not quite.

I never disputed the Trinity.

 

[Skywalker]

Not quite.

I never disputed the Trinity.

Jesus was sad that Jerusalem rejected him. That doesn't hint that he was a mere man and not God.

 

[Skywalker]

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

Nobody said that nonbelievers claim that. But the parallels between Jesus and Dionysus are doubtful. Jesus was not a biological son of God. It would be blasphemous to any Christian sect.

Debunking The Jesus/Dionysus Connection | Reasons for Jesus

1. Dionysus was born of a virgin on December 25th and, as the Holy Child, was placed in a manger.
One critic adds to the description of D as the “wondrous babe of God, the Mystery” and “He of the miraculous birth.”

We have already noted in our article on Mithraism why the Christmas birth date is of no relevance and this comes from a later church source, St. Epiphanius, which makes it of no relevance for copycatting claims. And, at any rate, I have noted no allusion to any birth date of Dionysus in any of the literature on him yet, other than one critic’s note that D’s birth was celebrated January 6 by some in Alexandria.

Born of a virgin? Not exactly, although it depends which of the stories you want to believe. In the most popular story, Dionysus’ mother was named Semele, and she was impregnated by Zeus when that dirty old god pulled one of his usual tricks by taking the form of a lightning bolt.

Later, a jealous Hera tricked Semele into asking Zeus to reveal his glory, which ended up burning Semele to a crisp and leaving the prenatal Dionysus behind. No absentee father at first, Zeus picked up the child and sewed him into his thigh until he was ready to be on his own. Dionysus is thus, in a sense, “twice born” and that is the “Mystery” that the above refers to, as found in Harrison. [Dan.GLE, 65; Harr.PGR, 436]

Another story has Dionysus as the son of Zeus and Persephone. [Dan.GLE, 93; Eva.GE, 153] Yet another Asiatic version has Dionysus self-born (these last two stories are very obscure). At any rate, there is clearly nothing like a “virgin” conception or birth here, but what we do have here is the usual divine fornication to which Zeus and other Greek gods were prone.

I have found no evidence that Dionysus was ever called “the Holy Child” (not that this matters, since this is a title of Jesus given well after the time of the Apostles) and also no evidence that Dionysus was placed in a manger. Critics offer neither documentation nor footnote on this point, so barring further discovery, I will have to regard this as a “ringer.”

Other critics refer to a “sacred marriage” that was performed in an “ox stall,” a very tenuous attempt to make a connection. A classical scholar who commented on this article stated of this ceremony:

“The woman represented the LAND (*possibly* a land-goddess), not the fertility goddess…she was actually the wife of a priest-politician called the Basileus who had originally been Athens’ king. There was no question of the ‘marriage’ being intended to produce offspring, though a few modern scholars have speculated that this was its original purpose…it seems to have been the WOMAN who generally represented the goddess, not the man who represented the god. I’m prepared to be proved wrong about this, however – but I think that this holds good as a general rule. The ox-stall was nothing of the kind, but a civic building called the Boukolion (roughly translating as ox-stall). It may originally have been (meant to represent) an ox-stall, but it certainly wasn’t anything of the sort even as early as classical times.”

 

[sojourner]

Jesus was sad that Jerusalem rejected him. That doesn't hint that he was a mere man and not God.

And this has ... what? to do with my post?

 

[Skywalker]

And this has ... what? to do with my post?

you mentioned Jesus being more vulnreable the closer he got to Jerusalem having to do with a theological point Mark was trying to make.

 

[sojourner]

you mentioned Jesus being more vulnreable the closer he got to Jerusalem having to do with a theological point Mark was trying to make.

It doesn’t have anything to do with the doctrine of the Trinity.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Jesus being the king of Israel was supposed to be a future event. It wasn't supposed to happen during the first advent of Jesus.

That's how the story was written because Jesus didn't become King of Israel as the Jews expected their Messiah to be. We can argue "It's a future event" or we can argue "Jesus failed on earth so it was turned into a future event". Both arguments are valid but without any evidence to back either, except for how the story got told and retold until it was finally written down.