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Biblical Plagiarism

TimCallahan said:
That's something I seem to have overlooked. Can you give me some specifics?
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Compare the following passages from Zechariah 11 and Matthew 27.

Zechariah 11:4-13 said:
This is what the Lord my God says: "Pasture the flock marked for slaughter. Their buyers slaughter them and go unpunished. Those who sell them say, 'Praise the Lord, I am rich!' Their own shepherds do not spare them. For I will no longer have pity on the people of the land," declares the Lord. "I will hand everyone over to his neighbor and his king. They will oppress the land, and I will not rescue them from their hands."

So I pastured the flock marked for slaughter, particularly the oppressed of the flock. Then I took two staffs and called one Favor and the other Union, and I pastured the flock. In one month I got rid of the three shepherds. The flock detested me, and I grew weary of them and said, "I will not be your shepherd. Let the dying die, and the perishing perish. Let those who are left eat one another's flesh." Then I took my staff called Favor and broke it, revoking the covenant I had made with all the nations. It was revoked on that day, and so the afflicted of the flock who were watching me knew it was the word of the Lord.

I told them, "If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it." So they paid me thirty pieces of silver.

And the Lord said to me, "Throw it to the potter"--the handsome price at which they priced me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord to the potter.
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Matthew 27:1-10 said:
Early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people came to the decision to put Jesus to death. They bound him, led him away and handed him over to Pilate, the governor.

When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty silver coins to the chief priests and the elders. "I have sinned," he said, "for I have betrayed innocent blood."

"What is that to us?" they replied. "That's your responsibility."

So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

The chief priests picked up the coins and said, "It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money." So they decided to use the money to buy the potter's field as a burial place for foreigners. That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: "They took the thirty silver coins, the price set on him by the people of Israel, and they used them to buy the potter's field, as the Lord commanded me."
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To be fair, I have seen translations that do not use the term "to the potter" in the passage from Zechariah, but the overarching theme of that passage, as well as the details, seem to match the Judas story fairly closely. The author of Matthew credits the prophecy to Jeremiah, but I think he simply got it wrong. If you think the mental gymnastics performed by fundamentalists over the Rodeo Jesus is strenuous, you should read some of the apologetics over this issue. The way they strain to find anything in Jeremiah even vaguely fitting Matthew 27:9 is quite amusing.
 
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Thanks for the material from Zechaariah. I'd forgotten his mention of the thirty pieces of silver. As to casting the money to the potter, as the KJV has it, the Hebrew word used, yatser, does indeed mean "potter." Oddly, the RSV substitutes "treasury," with a footnote saying that in Hebrew the word is "potter." I'm not sure where "treasury" came from, possibly a Greek substitution.
 
Taking a second look, I see that after God tell Zechariah to, "Cast it unto the potter," v. 13 continues with:

And I cast them to the potter in the House of the LORD.

This would be the reason the word "treasury" was substituted. However, I'm still trying to figure out what the potter was doing in the temple.
 
Okay, having looked through a number of commentaries, I finally found one that made sense concerning the potter in the house of the LORD. Apparently, casting the coins "to the potter" was an act of contempt, since the potter's profession was a lowly one. The wage of thirty pieces of silver was paltry and, as a sign of how worthless it was, God tells the prophet to cast it to the potter. The potter being in the House of the LORD would seem to by a slight against the Temple establishment.
 
TimCallahan said:
Okay, having looked through a number of commentaries, I finally found one that made sense concerning the potter in the house of the LORD. Apparently, casting the coins "to the potter" was an act of contempt, since the potter's profession was a lowly one. The wage of thirty pieces of silver was paltry and, as a sign of how worthless it was, God tells the prophet to cast it to the potter. The potter being in the House of the LORD would seem to by a slight against the Temple establishment.
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not quite
Exodus 21:32 said:
If the ox gore a bondman or a bondwoman, he shall give unto their master thirty shekels of silver,
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under Hebrew law 30 shekels was the price of a slave, now I think you'll understand the relevance of that amount to a lowly potter and why it was a disgraceful amount to betray the Messiah for
;)
 
I'm in Australia. How do I get my hands on your book Tim?

Also, what do you guys think of the parallels between the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Book of Exodus, with regards to the Ten Commandments. They seem almost exactly the same, and the Book of the Dead came first!

Also what about the Genesis Deluge compared to the Epic of Gilgamesh, once again, major similarities, even with releasing the birds and so on. And yes, the Epic came first!

See, the thing is, I don't really care much about any of this stuff at all. I know its all bullcrap, I don't really want to spend time and effort filling my head with useless chunk, when other skeptics have already graciously and diligently done the work before me. I would much prefer someone give me their list of plagiarisms, and their sources. Tim, you seem to be the man to ask in this regard? I'll buy your book as compensation for your help, after all, my dad loves that stuff.


Also my opponent has extremely basic knowledge with regards to this stuff, not all the in-depth knowledge about Rodeo-Jesus and the underlying meanings of texts and all the authors trying to fulfill their own prophecies etc. etc.

He is one of those people that hasn't read the Bible in full, yet believes it in full. All I need is some real basic, real simple to see comparisons that clearly show there has been plagiarism, to someone who has next to know biblical knowledge.

Thanks!
 
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Also, one more thing, the similarities with Horus, they just seem... to make so much sense (considering they came from Egypt). I mean, look at all these similarities that I can use:

Horus... born was of a virgin on dec 25th, birth heralded by the star in the east (Sirius), Herut tried to have Horus murdered, Herod tried to have Jesus murdered. From the age of 12 to age 30 there is no information for either Horus or Jesus. Horus and Jesus both walked on water, healed the sick, cast demons out, gave sight to the blind. Both died by crucifixion accompanied by two thieves and then buried in a tomb and resurrected after 3 days.


Are you guys telling me, what exactly? That these are all not true, that some of them are not true? What? And how do you know they are wrong?
 
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OhMan said:
Also, one more thing, the similarities with Horus, they just seem... to make so much sense (considering they came from Egypt). I mean, look at all these similarities that I can use:

Horus... born was of a virgin on dec 25th, birth heralded by the star in the east (Sirius), Herut tried to have Horus murdered, Herod tried to have Jesus murdered. From the age of 12 to age 30 there is no information for either Horus or Jesus. Horus and Jesus both walked on water, healed the sick, cast demons out, gave sight to the blind. Both died by crucifixion accompanied by two thieves and then buried in a tomb and resurrected after 3 days.


Are you guys telling me, what exactly? That these are all not true, that some of them are not true? What? And how do you know they are wrong?
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Horus was born in a miraculous manner, in that Isis had to find the 14 pieces of the body of Osiris and put them back together. Since a fish had eaten Osiris' penis, she had to substitute a wooden phallus, with which she copulated in the form of a kite (a hawk-like bird). I don't believe, however, that Isis was virgin, and she certainly wasn't mortal. Isis had to give birth to Horus in secret, hidden in a papyrus swamp, lest Set find and kill the child (I've never heard of "Herut").

I don't recall anything in the original myth about Horus walking on water, casting out demons, restoring sight to the blind or being crucified. Could you give me your source for this material?

The threatened infancy is a common motif in the mythology of the eastern Mediterranean area. It is found in the story not only of Horus, but of Sargon of Akkad. Both of these contributed material for the threatened infancy of Moses, which probably served as the basis for the threatened infancy of Jesus. Other threatened infancies are found in Greek mythology. Perseus and his mother Danae are locked in a chest cast into the sea. It washes up on an island, where a fisherman opens it and raises Perseus as his own son. Here we have Danae, an erstwhile virgin impregnated by a god, a royal prince raised by a kindly foster father who has a humble profession and the child floating on the waters in a boxlike structure. Both Oedipus and Paris, prince of Troy, were left as infants to die of exposure, but were found and reared by shepherds. Thus, again, we have threatened infancies and kindly, but humble foster fathers raising royal princes in humble circumstances.

Early Christians certainly co-opted the imagery of Isis and Horus as that of the Madonna and child. It's also likely that the pieta, Mary mourning over the corpse of Jesus, was taken from Isis mourning over the corpse of Osiris.

As far as I know, the only deity to have a December 25 birthday was Mithra, specifically in his guise as Sol Invictus (L. "Unconquered Sun"). As a solar deity, he was born on the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, after which the daylight hours start getting longer. In the Julian calendar at the time of Jesus (or thereabouts) the solstice fell on Dec. 25, rather than Dec. 21, as it does now. The church seems to have taken over the birthday of Sol Invictus as a way of driving out the opposition, just as the Ottoman Turks did when they turned the cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople into a mosque and renamed the city Istanbul.

Dying and rising gods were usually killed in a particularly gruesome manner, usually involving dismemberment, as in the cases of both Osiris and Dionysus. While there are images of Dionysus crucified, the were produced during the Common Era, probably as a way of co-opting the imagery of Jesus, just as the Gospel of John had co-opted Dionysus' miracle of turning water into wine.

You can get Secret Origins of the Biblefrom the Skeptics Society at skepticmag@aol.com.
 
OhMan said:
Also, one more thing, the similarities with Horus, they just seem... to make so much sense (considering they came from Egypt). I mean, look at all these similarities that I can use:

Horus... born was of a virgin on dec 25th,
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This is not a similarity you can use simply because nowhere in any of the canonical, or non-canonical gospels is Jesus (!) born on this date.

Christmas on the December 25th to celebrate the date of Jesus' birth is tradition. Not something grounded in the Bible.
 
Alright alright you've convinced me I'm ditching Horus.

What about my flood similarities and book of the dead similarities. The copying there is, dare I say it, self evident!


Now I would really like one more similarity to use, something as big as the flood or the ten commandments. I was hoping for it to be something about Jesus but I don't want to get too bogged down in advanced scholarship, just something simple and easy to verify by merely comparing two texts side-by-side...
 
OhMan said:
Alright alright you've convinced me I'm ditching Horus.

What about my flood similarities and book of the dead similarities. The copying there is, dare I say it, self evident!


Now I would really like one more similarity to use, something as big as the flood or the ten commandments. I was hoping for it to be something about Jesus but I don't want to get too bogged down in advanced scholarship, just something simple and easy to verify by merely comparing two texts side-by-side...
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Youre going about it the wrong way, you'll never convince a believer that the bible is wrong because parts of it appeared earlier in other cultures than it was written. They'll just claim that the Gilgamesh flood story is the same as the Bible one, but just told from a different cultural viewpoint.

If you really want to mess up his faith, just ask him what the last words of Jesus were before he breathed his last on the cross
;)
 
Haha yeah I know that one each gospel says something different. But no that's not my problem this person knows the flood didn't happen, so that can't be used as an excuse.

Just pleaase verify my Gilgamesh and Book of the Dead similarities and provide me with a third one and a source, please!!
 
OhMan said:
Alright alright you've convinced me I'm ditching Horus.
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I'm not sure if you were even considering it, but don't bother with the other deities there, either. The lists you have are just as wrong as those of Horus.

I was hoping for it to be something about Jesus but I don't want to get too bogged down in advanced scholarship, just something simple and easy to verify by merely comparing two texts side-by-side...
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Yeah, you're not going to find something that directly parallels the entire life of Jesus. However, you could probably make a good argument that some aspects of Jesus' life are rehashes of common mythological scenes. For instance, there are plenty of stories of a child who is prophesied to be a great king, and they have to escape the current, evil king who tries to kill them as an infant. You can find that in the myths of Oedipus, Perseus, Moses, and Zeus. However, do keep in mind that this doesn't automatically mean that everyone for whom such a story exists is a mythical figure: this was also added to the story of real people like Cyrus the Great (in Herodotus) and sort of even Augustus Caesar (Suetonius says that they considered killing all children born when Augustus was due to a portent saying that a king would be born). The idea that this is a later addition to the Jesus story is backed by the fact that our two birth narratives, that of Luke and Matthew, have little to do with each other (Luke talks about the census, travel to Bethlehem, and the whole no room at the inn story, while Matthew has Herod try to kill Jesus, the Magi, and no indication that Joseph and family were from anywhere but Bethlehem originally), and they even date Jesus' birth around 10 years apart (Matthew to the reign of Herod the Great, which ended in 4 BC, Luke to the census under Quirinius, which was in 6 AD)! You can easily find further similarities (particularly in the miracles and portents), and other places where there's unusual discrepancies in the story (like how the resurrection account is completely different in each source).
 
OhMan said:
Haha yeah I know that one each gospel says something different. But no that's not my problem this person knows the flood didn't happen, so that can't be used as an excuse.

Just pleaase verify my Gilgamesh and Book of the Dead similarities and provide me with a third one and a source, please!!
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I can't verify your book of the dead similarities, its unsupportable
there was already a thread
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=183743
;)

this is your real source for the ten commandments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_legal_codes
 
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God damnit why do so many people lie about this stuff arrggggh. Christianity shoots itself enough in the foot already god DAMN why do people need to make up more stuff which will just give Christians something to attack.

Damn-it!! OK. OK.

Your Wiki link was good, that serves the same purpose. I think my Gilgamesh similarities are pretty solid too, now I just need one more thing, 3 is a good number. Is there anything, any two passages or whatever, that clearly shows the NT taking off the OT? Just something simple and concise that doesn't require three years of biblical scholarship to understand. Remember, I am presenting this to a person who hasn't even read their own Bible yet.
 
OhMan said:
God damnit why do so many people lie about this stuff arrggggh. Christianity shoots itself enough in the foot already god DAMN why do people need to make up more stuff which will just give Christians something to attack.

Damn-it!! OK. OK.
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They lie about it, specifically in this case because they want to be able to claim that the Bible has links going back much further in time than the existence of the Hebrews around 1200bce, obviously if they didn't then they have to explain why God didn't exist until that point. Truth is, all religions do this, they are all built on the ruins of an older belief system, there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to Gods.
OhMan said:
Your Wiki link was good, that serves the same purpose. I think my Gilgamesh similarities are pretty solid too, now I just need one more thing, 3 is a good number. Is there anything, any two passages or whatever, that clearly shows the NT taking off the OT? Just something simple and concise that doesn't require three years of biblical scholarship to understand. Remember, I am presenting this to a person who hasn't even read their own Bible yet.
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That imo would be pointless, saying to a Christian that "hey look, the new testament is based on the old testament is a very short argument" and one that they claim already, you know about the new covenant right ?
;)
 
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