The Gospel

[kurious_kathy]

The message is pretty ◊◊◊◊◊◊ too.

Why do you think that? Did you ever see Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of Christ?" And if you did, didn't you feel any conviction about it?

 

[Antiquehunter]

Why do you think that? Did you ever see Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of Christ?" And if you did, didn't you feel any conviction about it?

I think Mel is a cranky whacked-out anti-semitic loony. But his eyes are dreamy.

 

[Ipecac]

Why do you think that? Did you ever see Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of Christ?" And if you did, didn't you feel any conviction about it?

Kathy, you just don't get it.

We (most of us here) don't believe that Jesus ever existed (or if he did he wasn't a god). To us, the snuff film (the Passion) is fictional. We could no more feel "conviction" by watching the snuff film than we would by watching Steven Seagal sacrifice himself to save his team in "Executive Decision".

I'll say it again, "It's fictional." Not a true story. Not a depiction of actual events.

I'm not going to base my life around this nonsense because of a fictional film.

 

[Nex]

I do however feel that the Gospel itself is an offense to people.
It always seems the person sharing this message becomes a victim of others harsh judgements, no matter what their backround is. [...]

Kathy, do you even read the posts here? Or do you just skim past the majority of them?

Why should any one of us listen to you, if you are not going to listen to us?

You have been told countless times that the bible is not being taken offensively, yet you still advance that unfounded drivel. You show us through your own actions that you do not listen to or respect anything we say.

What is being taken offensively is:

1. Your holier-than-thou attitude
2. Your judgment of others
3. Your unwillingness to listen
4. Your ignoring questions fairly put to you
5. Your rude and completely inept proselytising style
   [/list=1]
   
   Take note that "The Gospel" isn't anywhere in that list.

 

[Kimpatsu]

To add to Ipecac's post: Kathy, did you know that all the miracles ascribed to Jesus (walking on water, turning water into wine, raising the dead, being betrayed and killed, but coming back after three days) are in fact the legend of the Egyptian god Osiris? The most Jesus could have possibly been was an uppity rabbi who preached rebellion against the Romans. The rest of his legend predates him as a possible historical character; so how could he possibly have been a god?

 

[jjramsey]

Kathy, did you know that all the miracles ascribed to Jesus (walking on water, turning water into wine, raising the dead, being betrayed and killed, but coming back after three days) are in fact the legend of the Egyptian god Osiris?

Kimpatsu, did you know that much of your claim is not backed up by the facts, especially not the death and resurrection parallels?

 

[Kimpatsu]

Kimpatsu, did you know that much of your claim is not backed up by the facts, especially not the death and resurrection parallels?

I don't even know who Kersey Graves is; my sources are Latin transcriptions by Romans of Egyptian sources. You have taken a single indivdual and are claiming that because they are wrong, the entire notion must be wrong. Need I remind you of the logical fallacies involved therein...?

 

[Atlas]

[kk rant]
Why do you think I'm stupid. Don't you believe in angels? I'm not talking about the angel Joseph - He's bad - but all the other ones. I used to feel bad, now I can torment you.

Genesis 1:1-2 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness..."

Genesis 19:5-8 They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them."


Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them.

Genesis 1:9 ... And God saw that it was good


Luke 1:34 Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be"...

Revelations 17:7 The angel said to me, "Why do you wonder?" ...

Revelations 17:4 The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication.

Matthew 4:9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

Exodus 4:14 Then the LORD became angry...

Luke 1:31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb ...

Genesis 1:25 ... all kinds of wild animals, all kinds of cattle, and all kinds of creeping things of the earth.

John 19:30 ... he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; ...

Revelations 20:15 If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

[/kk rant]

 

[jjramsey]

I don't even know who Kersey Graves is; my sources are Latin transcriptions by Romans of Egyptian sources. You have taken a single indivdual and are claiming that because they are wrong, the entire notion must be wrong. Need I remind you of the logical fallacies involved therein...?

Actually, what I did was point to a thread that critiqued Kersey Graves' work which came up with a bunch of general problems with connecting Osiris and Jesus in the process, especially problems with fitting the myths of Osiris to a pattern of dying and rising in three days. It really doesn't matter, then, whether you have heard of Graves or not, because you have still fallen afoul of problems mentioned in the thread that aren't specific to Graves.

If you really think your claims stand up to scrutiny, then post your support of them either on this thread or on the Kersey Graves thread, which has since become a more general thread about supposed pagan-Christian parallels. If the support for your claims isn't available on the web, then at least make reference to the book or books you've used so that someone can check your sources.

 

[Kimpatsu]

Here you go, JJ: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa2.htm

 

[jjramsey]

Here you go, JJ: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa2.htm

Ah, Freke and Gandy, wonderful examples of New Testament scholars, on par with Gerd Theissen or Gerd Lüdemann, or historians like E.P. Sanders and Robin Lane Fox.



Kimpatsu, Freke and Gandy's book is woo-woo for the wannabe skeptic crowd. Here's a quote from an atheist who dealt with these guys:

Interestingly enough, I had the "good fortune" (and I am being kind) of hosting one of these gentlemen as a guest on the discussion boards on my site. . . .

Unfortunately for him, however, is that he did convince me of one thing. He convinced me to not bother with reading his book. After examining the arguments put forward by him on the boards regarding the historical Jesus, I have to say that your assessment is quite accurate, Jim. It is true that this is nothing more than the same tired arguments replayed: "No contemporary evidence, no busts, no personal writings, etc." There was complete disregard for the somewhat contemporary historians who took his existence for granted.

A quote from scholar Jim West, who was the Jim mentioned above:

I read it [Jesus Mysteries] a year or so ago.
It, truly, was simply a rehashing of the same "jesus is a myth" drivel that Strauss crushed in his "Life of Jesus Critically Examined".

This guy is somewhat theologically moderate to conservative, I think, but on the other hand, he praises Bultmann, who was anything but conservative! In short, we are not dealing with a fundie, here.

From a CNN review:

While the authors discuss many examples of elements of Osiris/Dionysus in the Jesus story, they virtually ignore the more direct ties to Jewish tradition and prophecy. This oversight undermines the credibility of many of their arguments, and could have the tendency to mislead the novice reader in this subject.

Also virtually ignored is the long tradition of historical Jesus research. John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, and E.P. Sanders, all modern recognized authorities on Jesus the man, do not even appear in the bibliography. . . .

The chapter, however, is marred by its use of direct passages from the epistles. A few verses are clearly taken out of context, and the translations used are extremely untraditional and conveniently Gnostic. The book rarely points out specific words that have been traditionally mistranslated, and those of us without command of Greek are left to take the authors' word that their translation is better.

From a review by a relatively moderate Christian hosted on a rather conservative apologetics site:

we are not dealing with a pair of objective scholars but people who are willing to pull the wool over the eyes of their readers. . . . On the basis of some third century pictures of crucifixions, the authors claim Bacchuus was crucified and Christians copied the idea. This is their piece de resistance and they even put one of the pictures on the cover of their book. . . .

They say that ‘no serious scholar’ believes Josephus wrote any of the Testamonium. I take it this is a joke or else they are claiming J. D. Crossan, R. T. France, Raymond Brown, John P. Meier, Michael Grant, Robin Lane Fox etc etc are not serious scholars. We might not agree with all of these guys (I mean, the last two are atheists) but we certainly consider them serious scholars.

I do not necessarily expect you to take for granted the veracity of a review from a Christian apologetics site. I do, however, expect that you can use it as a lead for further research. (I did something similar with an apologetic article debunking of Mithraic parallels to Jesus and found that the article held up. Its claims were even confirmed by a more recent Mithraic scholar, Manfred Clauss, who was not even one of the article's references.)

I noticed that in the article from Religious Tolerance, it said of Osiris-Dionysus that "God was his father" and a "human woman, a virgin, was his mother." In the OP of the Kersey Graves thread, it was pointed out that Osirus' mother Nut was a full-fledged goddess, while it was pointed out in a later post on the thread that in at least one version of the Dionysus myth, his mortal mother Semele was Zeus' lover and therefore not a virgin, while in another version of the myth, she became pregnant by a potion concocted by Zeus, which would be a form of virgin birth that is hardly evocative of anything in the Gospels. So much for that thread not having anything pertaining to you.

Is it any wonder that I don't take the idea of an Osiris-Jesus connection seriously?

 

[Kimpatsu]

Is it any wonder that I don't take the idea of an Osiris-Jesus connection seriously?

What is the problem here? The legend of Osiris predates that of Jesus, and yet contains all the elements of the miracles, particularly the betrayal, murder, and resurrection on the third day. So, the Jesus legend nicked the Osiris one and grafted it onto a different character. Why do you have a hard time swallowing that?

 

[jjramsey]

What is the problem here? The legend of Osiris predates that of Jesus, and yet contains all the elements of the miracles, particularly the betrayal, murder, and resurrection on the third day. So, the Jesus legend nicked the Osiris one and grafted it onto a different character. Why do you have a hard time swallowing that?

The problem is that the claim "The legend of Osiris . . . contains all the elements of the miracles, particularly the betrayal, murder, and resurrection on the third day" doesn't bear out when examined closely.

In the myth of Osiris, we have Set deposing Osiris in a coup by using a chest to trap him and suffocate him to death, then floating the chest out to sea via the Nile. Osiris' spirit passes to Duat, a place of judgment in the afterlife, and gets stuck, unable to pass to Amanti, where the spirits of the good dead go. Loosely speaking, Osiris is in a sort of limbo. Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, finds the chest, brings it back into Egypt, where Set accidentally finds it again while hunting at night. Set tears open the chest, rips apart the body of Osiris inside into fourteen pieces, and then scatters those pieces across the Nile. Over time, Isis finds all the pieces except Osiris' penis. She makes a replacement penis, joins all the pieces of Osiris' body together, and embalms him. At this point, Osiris' spirit passes to Amanti, where he becomes king of the dead. It does not appear too clear that this process was supposed to take three days. In one myth, Isis and Osiris make love in utero and conceive Horus. In another myth, Isis resurrects the reassembled Osiris just long enough to have sex with him and conceive Horus (source).

In the case of Jesus of Nazareth, we have a Galilean peasant killed as a troublemaker and messianic pretender. Whereas Set and Osiris are both brothers and gods, and thus are of comparable rank, Jesus is far further down the pecking order than Pilate and the Jewish authorities. When Jesus supposedly gets resurrected, he gets resurrected for good, and he does not get trapped in an underworld. The commonalities between Jesus and Osiris are vague and superficial, and the differences between the two are huge. There doesn't even appear to be a reference to "three days" in the myth of the reassembly of Osiris, except in the polemics trying to make parallels between Jesus and Osiris.

If you have a vague prophecy and a lot of history to which it can potentially match, you can fairly easily find an event that seems to fulfill the prophecy (as shown in the thread Prophecy Fulfilled). A similar dynamic holds here. If you have in mind a few points of contact subject to a wide range of interpretation, namely a revivification, a power struggle, and some use of the number three, and you have a lot of mythology to which they can potentially match, you can find something in mythology to "confirm" your points of contact as parallels. By similar logic, I can claim that the Jesus legend was copied from Norse myth, since Odin hanged himself from a tree and was revived a multiple of three days later (nine days, to be exact). Again, if you press the details, it doesn't pan out. Jesus was nailed to pieces of wood called a "tree" in order to evoke Deuteronomy's curse in verse 21:23. In Norse myth, Odin hung from a rope suspended from the tree that held the world together.

 

[Kimpatsu]

The most important elements ARE the same: betrayal, murder, and resurrection on the third day. It's not a question of the devil being in the details, but, FYI, the notion of the virgin birth arose because everyone who was anyone claimed it, including the emperor Tiberius. Virgin birth meant a divine father, see?

 

[Dr Adequate]

And I really was a Pagan minded person not that long ago myself...

I never denied there was a God. I knew always He is Love.

This extreme form of doublethink is not uncommon amongst fundies.

Don't you think the pure act of love speaks much about the existence of God?

No.

And then think about this, we know we have love, but can we see evidences of it?

Yes.

 

[ceo_esq]

The most important elements ARE the same: betrayal, murder, and resurrection on the third day. It's not a question of the devil being in the details, but, FYI, the notion of the virgin birth arose because everyone who was anyone claimed it, including the emperor Tiberius. Virgin birth meant a divine father, see?

You don't need a virgin birth to have a divine father; witness the many examples in Greek mythology of divine paternity without anything particularly reminiscent of the Christian virgin birth myth.

Which chronicler relates that Tiberius claimed a virgin birth, and where?

 

[Kimpatsu]

You don't need a virgin birth to have a divine father; witness the many examples in Greek mythology of divine paternity without anything particularly reminiscent of the Christian virgin birth myth.

No you don't need to; you could be sired the normal way (like the muses), but a virgin birth would have been regarded as definite evidence of divine patrilineage.

 

[wollery]

Being a good person is not enough!

Why not?

So you honestly believe that good people are going to hell? Even if they act exactly as the bible says they should except for believing in God?

What does that say for people, living in remote parts of the world, who have never heard the Christian message, and haven't therefore had the chance to believe in God and Jesus. There are people in this world in just that position. Do you believe that they are going to hell because of a trick of geography?

 

[jjramsey]

The most important elements ARE the same: betrayal, murder, and resurrection on the third day.

No, they aren't. The betrayal and murder of Osiris are essentially a mythological version of a court intrigue. The betrayal and murder of Jesus is the stomping down of a troublemaking peasant. Osiris gets resurrected long enough to have sex with Isis, but still ends up trapped in the underworld, which is a poor sort of resurrection. Jesus' resurrection is permanent, and he isn't trapped in either Heaven, Earth, or any sort of underworld. As far as I can tell, the only places where it is claimed that Osiris rose on the third day are in polemics that try to claim parallels between Christianity and Paganism. Two of your point of contact, betrayal-murder and resurrection, are the kind of blurry connections that one gets if one searches through a broad swath of mythology and tries to fit some of it to a particular broad pattern. The third point of contact has yet to be established.

What is interesting is that you go so far afield to find a vague parallel in Egyptian mythology, when Judaism of the first century already had ideas of resurrection of its own that were tied to a final judgment. Gee, sound familiar?

FYI, the notion of the virgin birth arose because everyone who was anyone claimed it, including the emperor Tiberius.

My point in bringing up the virgin birth is that it is a claim Freke and Gandy made that doesn't stand up to close scrutiny.

 

[ceo_esq]

No you don't need to; you could be sired the normal way (like the muses), but a virgin birth would have been regarded as definite evidence of divine patrilineage.

True. Now how about that Tiberius reference?