I have no particular gripe with this, it’s just not relevant. Christianity was a Gentile movement, not a Jewish one. The original Jewish movement in Jerusalem appears to have had little or nothing to do with what became Christianity after the destruction of Jerusalem.
I’m not propounding a 'copycat" theorym by the way, just pointing out the obvious fact that the Christian cult acquired some pagan influences after it left Palestine.
I hope you realize that you are making yourself sound dense.
No, I would not say that a novel about soldiers fighting in Afghanistan borrowed from the Iliad, if the only similarities were foreigners invading an Asian country.
But if it had a scene about soldiers gaining entrance into an impregnable fort by hiding inside a hollow structure which the defenders were enticed to take into the gates, then I certainly would think that it borrowed from the story of the Trojan Horse, even if the structure was not shaped like a horse.
Stories of an evil ruler trying and failing to kill a newborn baby are not quite as mundane as your “analogy” of soldiers fighting a war. I am talking about very unusual occurrences, as everyone but you can easily understand.
Even if the story of the Slaughter of the Innocents were literally true, IMO anyone observing it at the time would immediately be struck by the similarities to heroes like Moses and Hercules. Since IMO it was clearly fiction, anyone reading it must conclude that Matthew had those stories in mind when he “invented” it.
And Diogenes beat me to it wrt your rant about the purity of Jewish theology. As I noted in my first post in this thread, Christianity is remarkable among major religions, in that it never really caught on in its country of origin. The people among whom Jesus allegedly performed all his miracles, who allegedly saw the darkness and earthquake at his death, and even who allegedly saw all the Jewish saints come out of their tombs and walk the streets of Jerusalem — except for maybe a few hundred, those people remained firmly Jewish, despite Matthew’s frantic attempts to relate anything Jesus did to a prophecy from the Hebrew Bible, even if he had to mistranslate or completely fabricate said prophecy.
Christianity caught on among Gentiles, who had no idea what prophecies Jesus was supposed to fulfill, and who simply believed, without any evidence, that Jesus had done what was claimed. They were immersed in pagan culture, and any similarities between Jesus and pagan gods would be a plus, not a minus, to them.
You weren’t talking to me and you weren’t discussing the specific miracle I brought up, but it seems odd to me that if Jesus were really God and he really performed miracles, that these miracles would be similar to those of Vespasian or, if what I read is accurate, ancient Egyptian wizardry.
Presuming you don’t deny the similarity, what’s your explanation for this? That God/Jesus wanted people to believe that the old Egyptian miracles worked?
Careful there, lest the demons provide me more proof that Athena is simply Satan in disguise…
A pretty Satan, but Satan none-the-less…
Why did Jesus refuse to perform miracles on demand?
Because the J-man ain’t nobody’s bitch, yo!
No way. Athena is a virgin.
Are you…Are you insinuating somehow that Athena is Jesus’ true mother?
Puts a whole new light on “Love thy neighbor”, doesn’t it?
There I have to disagree with you. For centuries any educated person in the western world had to have studied both the gospels and Greek mythology and even today there are many millions of people who have read both. Among that very large group, nobody judged the childhood of Jesus to refer to that of Hercules in the early centuries as far as I know, and even in recent generations relatively few people see it. If Matthew intended for that story of the life of Jesus to remind people of Hercules, it raises the obvious question of why the story failed to do that for centuries and in most cases continues to fail.
You argue that the similarities between the two stories of assassination attempts are strong enough that “anyone” must see copying or referencing at work. You are free to see such strong similarities if you want to, but you have no justification for demanding that everyone do so. To me the differences are much larger and more obvious, especially when weighed against what you’re arguing. Imagine we have Matthew sitting at home, composing his gospel, and he wants to make up an incident in the childhood of Jesus to remind people of the story in which a goddess (not a “ruler”), motivated by sexual jealousy, sends snakes to attack a boy at night, and the boy strangles the snakes. Why would he write a story in which a human authority under the Roman Emperor, motivated by fear, orders his soldiers to slaughter children in a certain town, and the family of Jesus narrowly escapes by fleeing? Wouldn’t those large differences more or less guarantee that almost everybody would miss the similarity that was supposedly intended to be clear?
(The issue of whether the story of Jesus was intended to reference Moses is different since Jews in that period did believe that the characters and events of the Jewish scriptures provided clues about how God was acting in the present. I wouldn’t necessarily argue against the possibility of a connection there.)
Maybe I’m off base here, but Jesus did remind people of Hercules and other Pagan figures - the early Christian apologists used this similarity to argue for demonic forgeries. I quoted from Justin Martyr above where he was doing just that.
I don’t know if it was Matthew’s expressed intent, but the fact is, the early apologists used the similarities of the stories in order to argue that their stories (Christianity) were superior.
To deny that Christianity was similar to existing religions at the time seems simply absurd to me. Yes, it had it’s differences, some of which probably helped the spread.
I can’t really see all that much about Christianity that is unique. Seems like the inspiration from it was pulled from the Old Testament with some Pagan “spice” thrown into the mix.
People are still interpreting modern events through the bible - check out Left Behind. I think something similar occurred during Christianities development.
For the majority of early apologists this is not the case. Starting with Paul, the main emphasis while defending and defining Christianity is on the many, large differences separating Christian beliefs from others, both Pagan and Jewish. If you read early Christian apologists such as Aristides, Minutus Felix, the anonymous Epistles to Diognetus Laertes, Tatian, Irenaeus of Lyons, and others, they all play up differences and don’t mention similarities, as far as I’m aware. The basis pattern is ‘Christians believe this while Pagans believe that and the Christian beliefs are superior because of blah blah blah’.
As for Justin Martyr, it’s important to read all of what he wrote in order to understand what he’s really saying. First of all, Justin’s discussion of similarities between Pagan deities and Jesus is only a small part of his work. You quoted from chapter 21, but if you continue reading the rest of it you’ll see Justin going on the attack against various non-Christian religious practices. To understand why he wrote what he did in chapter 20 through 22 we have to put the Apology in historical context. In the mid-second century the Romans were persecuting Christians based on their view that Christian doctrine was so extreme as to threaten the basis of Roman power. Justin’s Apology is addressed to Roman authorities and the intention is to end the persecution, not to win converts. Hence Justin is not trying to say, “Come and join us because our Christian beliefs are just like your Pagan beliefs.” Rather, he is trying to say, “Our Christian beliefs aren’t so radically different from yours, so could you please stop killing us.”
Well, to me it is obvious that the center of Christian doctrine is quite unique. The central beliefs of Christianity are that Jesus Christ was the incarnation of God, lived and died as a human, was resurrected, and accomplished the forgiveness of human sin and opened the way to salvation. The analogies from other religions offered as sources for the resurrection simply aren’t very similar. Characters who supposedly died and rose annually as a metaphor for fertility and harvest usually belonged to minor cults far removed in time and place from Palestine in the first century; more significantly, in no cases did the event have any relationship to sin, forgiveness, and salvation. The idea that the early Christians would incorporate Pagan stories to help converts feel more comfortable doesn’t hold water for me. Those who invented new religions in the 19th-century USA didn’t incorporate the stories of Paul Bunyan or Davy Crockett to help people feel more comfortable.
Every mythos is unique in it’s details. That doesn’t mean that the broader themes aren’t shared or adopted.
Your quibble about resurrection myths not being Palestinian is a strawman, by the way. As I said before, Christianity was a Gentile movement, not a Jewish one. Jews (especially Palestinian Jews) didn’t buy a word of it because they knew it was riddled with pagan heresy, and because they knew it was pretty much wrong in everything it claimed about Jewish scripture and the Jewish Messiah. Judaism had some boutique popularity in the Roman world at that time, it was fashionably exotic and different, sort of like the kind of watered down Eastern teachings you see in the US now. Paul used that Gentile interest in Judiasm, but totally distorted it to fit his purposes. It was like trying to sell a new religion by pretending it’s based on “ancient Chinese wisdom,” or like what Deepak Chopra does with Hindusim. The marks think they’re getting authentic Mexican food when they’re really just getting Taco Bell.
In the case of Paul’s attempt to sell Christianity as “Jewish,” Jews knew that for the horseshit that it was. The very fact that Jews did NOT buy into it actually shows that they knew it was pagan.
Are there any cites anywhere at all concerning the miracles of Jesus from any sources at all other then what we call the Bible? Have we ever come across a letter from anyone to someone else that states, “Hey, man, I went to this wedding and we ran out of wine and this guy make a jug of water turn into wine. Man, I was impressed, I’ll tell you that.” Have we any independent cites at all from anyone who was there and saw it happen for any of Jesus’ vaunted miracles? Or are we simply expected to believe stories that cannot in any way be verified? I’m not a scholar and I would love to have some sort of cite that comes from some source other than the source we are debating-----
If these miracles did occur, then the most natural source for historical testimonies would be from the writings of believers. After all, a non-believer would be unlikely to testify to the fact that such miracles actually did occur – ESPECIALLY since these would be the people who were in the best possible position to observe such events.
Note that I’m not saying that this proves that such miracles actually took place. That would be another discussion altogether. What I’m saying is that it would be misguided to insist on requiring accounts that exist outside of the records of his followers.
Yeah, I know, I know. It’s common for laypeople to declare, “We MUST have unbiased sources for these accounts!” The thing is, that’s not how historians operate. Historians understand that people typically write about the things that matter to them, and so it’s foolish to insist on having unbiased sources – especially on matters of ancient history, which took place centuries before the advent of modern media. Historians understand that there will usually be a certain amount of bias in historical accounts. They take that into consideration when evaluating historical records, and they do not reject an account simply because the author may have been favorably disposed toward the protagonist of such accounts.
The problem isn’t that sources are biased, but that they aren’t primary witnesses. We have no testimony of any sort from anyone who actually saw anything or knew Jesus.
Of course, and even bigger problem than that is that miracles are impossible.
Aren’t miracles by definition miraculous, i.e. something ordinarily impossible happens?
Weren’t the Gospels themselves based on a text written by one of Jesus’ disciples?
Many Jewish myths, esp. the Great Flood and the two creation stories in Genesis, were “borrowed” wholesale from ancient Sumerian and/or Babylonian myths, so the Jews aren’t alone in plagiarizing other people’s religions.
I disagree quite strongly with that assessment, but even if we were to grant your claim, your objection would not be fatal. No self-respecting historian would claim that only eyewitness testimony is acceptable for historical purposes. Historians – indeed, writers of any ancient account – generally write about a great many things, not necessarily matters that they have personally witnesses. A modern historian’s task is to sift through this information and evaluate it based on criteria such as explanatory scope, explanatory power, degree of ad hocness, and so forth.
For more information on this matter, I refer you to Justifying Historical Descriptions by historian-philosopher C. Behan McCullagh. Suffice to say that nobody who understands ancient history would dismiss an account simply because the author was not an eyewitness.
Oh, and FTR… LouisB specifically requested sources outside the Bible. Clearly, his implicit objection was due to the biased nature of the Biblical writings. As I said, that objection may sound reasonable to enthusiastic laypeople, but it’s simply invalid – ESPECIALLY since it would be darned near impossible to remain unbiased in the event of an actual miracle. Anyone who could testify to such an event would be most certainly biased on way or another.
Granting for the sake of discussion that you are correct for something truly miraculous, like walking on water, your objection does not hold for unusual events that would have been remarked upon by unbiased observers.
For example, we have some decent historical accounts of King Herod. Secular historians record that he murdered various people, including some of his own children, presumably within the privacy of his own palace. So we would expect them to record the noisy and public slaughter of every male child under two in the region of Bethlehem. But nobody knows about that but Matthew, not even the other Gospel writers.
We have decent historical accounts of first-century Roman administration. If Augustus had decreed that all the world be taxed, and that a census be conducted that required everyone to return to his ancestral home, even women in their ninth month of labor, someone should have remarked on that. But nobody knows about it but Luke, not even the other Gospel writers.
There is no record outside the Gospels of all kinds of things that any alert observer would have noted, whether or not he had ever heard of Jesus. The Star of Bethlehem, the laughable “custom” of allowing the mob to tell the Roman authorities to release someone condemned to death, the earthquake at the time of the crucifixion, etc.
And my favorite, from Matthew:
27:52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,**
27:53** And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.
Anyone living in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’s death, even if he had no awareness of Jesus, would not have stopped talking about this for decades. But nobody knows about it but Matthew, not even the other Gospel writers.
Correct, but we WERE talking about miracles, so that objection is irrelevant to the topic of this thread.
Again, that’s irrelevant to the scope of this thread. Since you brought it up though… there are scarcely ANY historical records dating back to those times. Remember, this was long before the advent of modern printing or mass media. There were also no libraries, no electronic media, no other widespread means of preserving information for centuries to come. While we do have some historical records regarding Herod, these are by no means exhaustive, and it would be unsurprising for there to be sizeable gaps. Indeed, whatever parchments and papyri we do have are often in unfortunate condition, due to the weathering of the centuries.
You also make an unwarranted assumption when you say that the other Gospel writers were unaware of this event. They did not write about this mass killing, but that does not mean that they were unaware of it. Writers typically pick and choose what they write about, based on their chosen theme. For example, the Gospel of Mark is written in a compact, action-oriented manner with an extreme brevity of words. In fact, he completely skipped over any details of Christ’s childhood, which would explain why he did not mention the murders under Herod.
To cut a long story short… enthusiastic but underinformed laypeople often make the mistake of applying modern standards of historiographical proof to ancient accounts. That simply doesn’t fly, for the aforementioned reasons and others. These objections sound engaging – scandalous, even – but they do not reflect any reasonable approach to evaluating ancient history.