They were composed over several centuries.
Zoroastrianism itself dates to around 1100 BCE.
Well that would make me right about the dating of the Avestas, not wrong. The oldest parts may date to the 2nd millenium BC–though we have no evidence of it–but the only version of the Avestas that we have now dates to much later. This website gives 226-651 AD. That matches exactly what I said, that the “chief source we have” comes from “several centuries after the founding of Christianity”. However, the real question at issue here is what Cpomeroy asked, namely whether Zoroastrianism features a virgin birth and whether Christianity copied the virgin birth of Jesus from that. The answers are no and no.
Please explain why, specifically.
Please provide a cite to back up this claim. (And recall that a cite means a reference to a reliable, outside source of information that clearly establishes what you said. Repeating yourself is not a cite. Calling everyone who disagrees with you a “joke”, “idiot”, “moron”, “woo”, etc… is not a cite. Appealing to a supposed consensus among scholars is not a cite.)
You might want to read the recent thread on Nostradamus, and how easy it is to find ways to make ‘prophecies’ correspond with events if you are non-specific enough.
The so-called Messianic prophecies are strained, to say the least. It hardly takes divine inspiration to say a snake will strike at a man’s foot, but we are told that THAT is one of the first Messianic prophecies. Give me any novel over a few hundred pages, and I can find dozens of prophecies of that quality that relate to Jesus, or for that matter, to me.
I wasn’t making the claim that they proved anything.
Too late to edit — but I have never understood the Christian fascination with alleged Messianic prophecies.
Matthew and Luke totally destroy their credibility with their ridiculous birth narratives, in an attempt to explain why their Messiah lived in Nazareth, rather than Bethlehem. And Matthew especially twists every irrelevant verse he can into a prophecy, including one that nobody else can even find (“He shall be a Nazarene”), and including things, like the virgin birth, that Jews never required of the Messiah.
And yet, they all overlook the most important thing — the Messiah, by definition, had to drive the invaders out of Israel. If he didn’t do that, he wasn’t the Messiah, no matter who his parents were, or where he was born.
It’s as if I claimed to be the President of the US, and offered as proof the facts that I am a natural born citizen of the US, and am over 35, and am not a convicted felon.
All true, but so what, if I neglected that one little detail of actually being elected?
That was/is the traditional Jewish definition of the Messiah. The earliest Christians came to believe that this interpretation of Messianic prophecy was incorrect, and that Jesus fulfilled the messianic prophecies, albeit in unexpected ways.
I understand, but if Christians are going to redefine the most important aspect of the Messiah, why tie themselves in knots trying to make very minor aspects match up with Jewish prophecy?
I think she was a virgin, because the writers wanted to make it absolutely clear that GOD was Jesus’s father, not Joseph. Unless you state Mary didn’t have sex, someone will come along an argue the point, maybe it was Joseph or maybe someone else, or even she was raped.
But by saying Mary was a virgin, it makes it clear GOD was Jesus’s father.
Well Jesus’ disciples were convinced, during his lifetime, that he was the Messiah. When he was executed it came as quite a shock, and required them to re-evaluate.
For some reason (Christians attribute it to the Resurrection), Jesus’ followers came to believe that despite having died, He was the Messiah after all. So they had to go back and comb the scriptures to find evidence that Jesus was the Christ despite having not restored David’s throne.
This is evident in the descriptions of the very earliest sermons that Peter delivered in Jerusalem:17 “Now, fellow Israelites, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. 18 But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. 19 Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, 20 and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus. 21 Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. – Acts 3:17-21
So the story goes that Jesus was the Messiah; and he suffered just as the scriptures predicted. And the prophecies about him restoring Israel are also valid, but they are still in the future. That’s been the message of the Christianity from literally the very beginning.
Yes we do. The evidence is linguistic, specifically the prpximity of the language to the Sanskrit Vedas.
They were written over many centuries, and trying to date them by extant manuscript is disingenuous and misleading. The oldest manuscripts of the New Testament date centuries after Jesus as well. The fact remains that Zorastrianism is over 1000 years older than Christianity and that several of its beliefs got into Christianity via Judaism.
Because he is an uncredentialed, literalist, polemic blowhard. He’s a retired prison librarian with no expertise who engages in very poor apologetics. He’s a creationist. Need I say more.
This is tiresome. Google “Zoroastrian influence on Judaism.” Take a basic course on Jewish History and you’ll learn it there too.
To summarize (and I’m not going to go looking for links but if you wikipedia Zorastrianism, you’ll see all you need to see), All of the beliefs I mentioned existed in Zorastrianism well before Judaism, and then coincidentally got into Judaism (where they hadn’t existed before) right around the time that Persia liberated the Jews from Babylon. If you’re going to try to deny that those beliefs existed in Zoroastrainism first, then you are beyond any reasonable discussion and I’m not going to waste my time.
I stand corrected on the midwife bit. I don’t know where I picked that up from, but it apparently wasn’t from the Bible. Note, by the way, that even wherever-it-was I picked that up from, it’s not claimed that Mary’s hymen was intact after the birth, just during labor.
Because most of the current Christian social culture is geared towards the punishment of a woman that enjoys sex or finds it enjoyable.
Therefore the woman that gave birth to their god must have been be free of human pleasure, so she had to be impregnated by a god… which leaves a question unanswered: did that woman enjoy her magical copulation with a god? Did the god enjoy the copulation as well?
There’s no limit in asking questions like those, if the premise is illogical or moronic to start with.
I will add that outside of Psalm 2, AFAIK, there is no prophecy in the Hebrew Bible that says “Messiah will destory our oppressors and restore Israel”. The closest thing is Isaiah’s prophecy or commission to “Cyrus, My messiah/anointed”. Other such prophecies refer to the Main Actor as YHWH, “The King”, “The Lord (Adonai)”, El or Elohim, “David the Prince”, etc. However, Daniel 9 does say that a “messiah/anointed prince will be cut off” and that afterwards the Temple would be desolated & the City of Jerusalem destroyed. Jesus in Matthew 23-25, Mark 13 & Luke 21 is shown applying that prophecy to himself.
There is another sense that the Christian Scriptures use the Hebrew Scriptures as Messianic prophecy that regards Messiah as “the Personification of Israel” so that when Scripture says something of Israel or the great patriarchs or heroes or prophets, and then when Jesus experiences something similar, that Scripture is trotted out to show that in the ontogeny of Jesus is recapitualted the philogeny of Israel. Jesus did not have to be born in Bethlehem but he did have to descend from David of Bethelem. He did not have to go into & come out of Egypt but he did have to descend from the Israelites who did. The assertion that he did do both of these things tho were seen as validations of him being “The Israelite Extraordinaire” so to speak.
You see, here is where we run into a slight problem.
I imagine He would be. I mean, after having made it with the Creator of all things?
Gotta be pretty tough for Mary too. I mean, even afterwords, Mary and Joseph are getting into it, and Mary starts moaning “Oh, God, Oh God!”
“GREAT! I knew you’d keep bringing up the past! I’ll never be good enough for you!”
(stolen and adapted from some comedian’s bit.)
I have no specific historic knowledge to back this up, but IMO the virginity thing was concocted to deal with any possible questions regarding Jesus’s paternity. A pregnant virgin must be an act of God, pretty much by definition.
It is my understanding of Catholic doctrine, that Joesph had children before he married Mary, and was portrayed as a much older man than Mary. They also teach it was cousins not brothers ,even though Mary was said to have visited her ‘cousin’ Elizabeth who’s child( John the baptist) lept in her womb when he heard Mary tell Elizabeth that she was with God’s child!
The RCC church’s Bishops were considered the line of Peter (since Peter was Bishop of Rome at the time of Constantine), then all bishops(Popes) of Rome were considered to have direct power to Peter’s chosen line of power, given by Jesus to Peter to bind or loose and would be bound or lessened in Heaven! It was the writings that the then Orthodox and RCC bishops decided were God’s word and what was not! Hence the Pope’s rules would become God’s rules and speaking ex-catherdra would be error free!
This is probably why there is so much in Common with the Jesus story as with the Egyption God Osiris, who has many properties that Jesus is said to have. Osiris was called the Good Shepard, God and son of God, and they even had bread and wine ceremonies. He ressurected from the dead with the help of Isis who gathered up his parts, (since he was cut to pieces) and flew over him in the form of a dove and concieved Horus!
In my reading of Genesis, the punishment for sin was death…nothing spiritual was implied!
I believe it was about 4 BCE that a man named Simon declared himself to be the Messiah, and believed he had to suffer for the People. It is my understanding that there were several men who people thought was the Messiah, before and after the time of Jesus.