I am an agnostic and a pastor was asking me why I think Jesus is a legend and then I did a bit of research into beliefs like in that first youtube video. I’m pretty disappointed in atheists that keep repeating that stuff since it seems to be very misleading or untrue.
Exactly.
Plus there are misconceptions. For instance, to my knowledge, the whole virgin birth thing was due to a misappropriation of a passage in the Old Testament.
Now, if you take away the ‘virgin’ aspect, then yes, Jesus’s birth was pretty much the same as a whole bunch of mythical figures (even with the virgin aspect there are similarities). Early Christians even admitted this:
Personally, I am not impressed at all with the “arguments” that Jesus’ chroniclers cribbed His powers and abilities from other mythological figures. I understand a new book is coming out which deal with the historicity of Jesus, which may explain the recent uptick in threads about this.
I actually see no reason to doubt that the Christian religion is built on the teachings of an actual preacher, or that additional myth and legends adhered to his legacy by subsequent generations of followers. It seems the “debunkers” who point out the parallels between Christian mythology and/or iconography and other faiths are coming from a very fundamentalist approach. That is, they seem to feel that if they discredit some random details then the entire construction will collapse.
While this may be a useful way to argue with actual Fundamentalists, as it helps them begin to think for themselves and recognize that historical accuracy is no way to assess the “truth” of a religion, I would think that a self-described agnostic would understand that similarities in myth cycles only show a common cultural response to the existential questions addressed by religions.
If you consider all the men whose names and teachings are older than 1000 years and still being taught today you will find they mostly taught or wrote about life. How to treat others; how to live life; what is really important in relationships, etc.
Furthermore, all these men tend to say similar things about life. What Jesus taught was not new material and I believe most people know that. So the reason these sayings have lived over 1000 years is that they are beneficial to all people.
However the benefit comes only when one decides to follow the teachings, otherwise the teachings are meaningless…
Yes, it’s all nonsense. Basic parts of the Jesus story (or more modern additions thereunto, like the date December 25th) are just added willy-nilly to whatever other God might currently be trendy, with no attention paid to what the ancient sources say. Seems to me to be mostly a New Age or neo-pagan thing, rather than something the Atheists do.
They had been around for a while but the Rosetta stone wasn’t discovered until 1799 and even after it had been, it was quite a while before the hieroglyphs could be reliably translated.
Agreed; until Champollion’s — and others’ — work in decipherment, and until Layard’s diggings in the Middle East there wasn’t any great need for Departments of Oriental Studies as they would have devolved into religious wrangling depots — and even in the middle of the century very few people would have the latest information on the subject fit enough to expound on it in lectures.
And Massey himself, who was rather an odd duck, although a brilliant one, could not have attended those if they existed:
*Born in a hovel at Gamnel Wharf, Tring, on 29th May 1828, (THOMAS) GERALD MASSEY was the eldest son of an impoverished and illiterate canal-boatman. Massey said of himself that ‘he had no childhood,’ for on reaching the age of eight he was put to work in the Town’s silk mill where his twelve-hour days spent labouring in grim conditions added between nine pence and one shilling and three pence to his father’s meagre earnings. He later worked in Tring’s then-thriving straw plaiting industry producing braid for the straw hat trade in nearby Luton and Dunstable. Thanks to his mother, Mary, Massey received a scant education at a “penny school”. Despite these tough beginnings, he learned to read and write using the Bible, Bunyan, Robinson Crusoe and Wesleyan tracts left at the family home. *
Gerald Massey . co. uk
He deserves all the more credit for being self-educated to such an incredible level.
Massey - like Dupuis, Higgins, de Volney, Taylor and other self-taught 19th century “gentleman amateurs” - seem to be popular both with New Age types and with Zeitgeist-style atheists.
I was raised Hindu, and I’ve never heard anything about Krishna being a carpenter (or a virgin birth, for that matter)… The only Google hits for “Krishna carpenter” are references to the hypothesized similarity of Krishna and Jesus. I call shenanigans.
ETA: Whoops, I read too fast. This is addressed in the OP.
Read Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection 2 volumes, and see how close to the telling of Jesus life was close to Osiris who was pre -Dynasty times. He was called the good shepherd, god, and son of god. He also resurrected after being cut to pieces ,then Isis his sister wife collected the parts, but couldn’t find the penis, so she took the form of a dove flew over him and conceived Horus!
Yeah, I’m being sarcastic. If Jesus was cut to pieces post-crucifixion, had a sister named Isis who collected the parts but couldn’t find the penis, took the form of a dove, flew over him and conceived Horus, well, the gospels fail to mention it.
