I'm not a mythicist, but this is a claim that I've seen a couple of times and I haven't been able to verify it. I've actively went out of my way to try and find direct evidence for this but I keep coming up empty. There was a census conducted at the time, but I'm not sure if a copy of the census itself still exists. It's mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, but it mistakenly claims that it took place during the rule of King Herod so the timeline doesn't match up.He literally appears on the Roman census despite the fact that the Roman Empire hated the dude. For once I will actually say this unironically: checkmate, atheists!
Also, an obligatory this:
It's not gonna die, Hasbro just opened a new fucking studio half the size of pixar solely dedicated to producing the sequel series which will take place in an alternate dimension.
Look with Monster High dead there's an entire fucking market that has a void. Non-traditional dolls/Alternative Style Dolls currently have no market leader.
Are you shitting me? I know MLP crap has no chance of dying but I thought the cunts at Hasbro would be out of touch enough that they would just make something unappealing to manchildren again like their 80s shit, but now you're telling me they're ending the current shit, which was a furry/neckbeard/pedo magnet, only to make a new one made by actual furry neckbeards? I can only imagine what kind of horrors this will unleash upon the internet. And dare I ask what the fuck is an equestria girl? Horse furries that stand on two legs?
If you accept one religious text as evidence of its claims don’t you have to accept them all? From an academic standpoint what makes the New Testsment different from, say, the Book of Mormon?
Dude hasbro has already hired fan artists to help market transformers.
Ancient Pagan cultures shared a common set of ideas about Gods. Christianity adopted those ideas, and applied them to Jesus.
Christianity is a product of its time and place.
Greg
If you're like me, you grew up thinking it didn't. We were taught Christianity began with a big bang, with Jesus. Jesus changed the world with ideas about God that were new and revolutionary.
It ain't so. Our Christianity doesn't come from Jesus and a big bang. It comes from the accumulation of legends and theologies by people who believed in Jesus. The origin of those ideas wasn't Jesus. The origin was the myths, legends, philosophies, prejudices, literature, superstitions, and primitive cosmology of ancient western culture. Christianity is a product of its time and place.
That's what POCM is about.
Notice what POCM is not about. An example: our gospels tell a story about the time Jesus met a crazy man, who was inhabited by devils, who spoke to Jesus, who cast those old devils out, into a herd of pigs, who ran down a hill, into the Sea of Galilee, and drowned. POCM is not about the details of this story. It's not about whether insanity can appear to be cured because it's really just psychosomatic. It's not about whether there were pigs in Jewish Galilee, or whether there really is a hill by the Sea of Galilee that pigs could run down. POCM is not a naive hunt for the historical "facts" of our Jesus stories.
What POCM is about is the ideas inside the Jesus and Demons story. Hang on a second; according to the bible, the first Christians believed in demons. Demons. They believed in demons. They actually believed there are actual beings that live inside people and cause illness. That think, and hear, and talk, and move around, and do stuff. The first Christians had the idea, the concept of demons. The first Christians thought demons recognized Jesus, and talked to Him, and He talked to them, and overcame their supernatural power with His own. How can that be? Where can these ideas have come from? POCM is about where Christianity got the ideas that shape our first stories about Jesus.
Jesus, third century AD
Athens, sixth century BC
Jesus was the Son of God who suffered, died, and came back to life. But He wasn't the first Son of God who suffered, died, and came back to life. He brought salvation; but He wasn't the first God to do that either. His dad was a God and his mom was a mortal woman; He wasn't the first God there either. It's the same with miracles, disciples, ascending to heaven—the list goes on and on. Before the first Christians had these ideas about Jesus, Pagans had the same ideas about their Gods. That's what POCM is about.
Here's what I mean...
<< When Osiris is said to bring his believers eternal life in Egyptian Heaven, contemplating the unutterable, indescribable glory of God, we understand that as a myth.
<< When Vespatian's spittle healed a blind man, we understand that as a myth. When Apollonius of Tyana raised a girl from death, we understand that as a myth. >>
<< When the Pythia , the priestess at the Oracle at Delphi, in Greece, prophesied, and over and over again for a thousand years, the prophecies came true, we understand that as a myth.
<< When Romulus is described as the Son of God, born of a virgin, we understand that as a myth.
<< When Augustus is described as the Son of God, born of a mortal , we understand that as a myth.
Jesus in the 3d century, healing the sick by touching them with a magic wand! 
So how come when Jesus is described as
the Son of God,
born of a mortal woman,
according to prophecy,
turning water into wine,
raising girls from the dead, and
healing blind men with his spittle,
and setting it up so His believers got eternal life in Heaven contemplating the unutterable, indescribable glory of God, and off to Hades—er, I mean Hell—for the bad folks...
how come that's not a myth?
And how come, in a culture with all those Sons of God, where miracles were science, where Heaven and Hell and God and eternal life and salvation were in the temples, in the philosophies, in the books, were dancing and howling in street festivals, how come we imagine Jesus and the stories about him developed all on their own, all by themselves, without picking up any of their stuff from the culture they sprang from, the culture full of the same sort of stuff?
Greg
If you think POCM is not just wrong but irrationally stupid, this page is for you. I've noticed from my email that folks who really really don't like what POCM says often don't actually understand what POCM says. My fault. Failure to communicate. Let me fix that here. What conservatives bring to POCM Folks whose Christian belief is conservative arrive here knowing Jesus is important because of what happened in history. Our gospels are first hand histories written by people who talked and ate and slept
with the historical Jesus. The facts of Jesus' life prove His divinity, prove the meaning of His life, prove our salvation. For many Christians facts, gospel facts, are the fundamental, irreducible unit of our Jesus stories.
On account of which when believers hear "Christian - Pagan borrowing" what they see is our gospel writers lifting facts—events— from Pagan stories. They see Luke, reed pen in hand, Gospel of Horus open on the desk, copying born on December 25th. Copying virgin mother. Copying crucified. Like that.
The idea is preposterous. Our gospel writers knew Jesus personally, knew He was a Jew not a Pagan, and we're supposed to believe they ignored their first hand experience and put in stories about Horus? What, are you nuts? And anyway, the Pagan stories are always different, in some detail, from the Christian history. Greg is irrationally stupid. POCM may be the most dishonest web site on the internet.
How POCM's theory is different
On account of the literalists' facts about Jesus aren't facts after all, POCM doesn't start with the conclusion that the fundamental unit of our Jesus stories are the "facts" in the stories.
Instead POCM starts with the ancient Pagan texts, with the observation that ancient Mediterranean Pagan culture was full of stories about magic dreams, prophecies, miracles, angels, demons, and walking, talking, salvation bringing sons of God. The building blocks of Pagan religion look familiar.
The other thing POCM observes is, the facts in Pagan stories didn't come in random jumbles. Pagan story tellers put their invented "facts" together in ways that had purpose, logic and meaning. One example. Godmen had miraculous births. Miraculous birth was a sign of specialness. So if you wanted to show that a real historical person was special— Alexander the Great, say, or the emperor Augustus, or Romulus, or Scipio Africanus—you made up a story about how their birth was miraculous and divine. POCM's theory is that when we peel back the "facts" and get to the purpose, we see that Christian purpose and Pagan purpose was generally the same. Christian purpose is Pagan purpose. Christianity is a product of its time and place.
POCM is about what the myths themselves are about: purpose, logic and meaning. The virgin birth of Jesus was not copied, fact by fact, from Horus or Mithras or Alexander. The "facts" in each of those Pagan myths were different. What they all shared was logic and purpose: Here's how the great man / divine man got his divinity. A divine being brought it to him down from the sky.
If you're not interested or able to see the question that way, POCM will waste your time. Click away.
connected you to the divine creator of the universe.
POCM isn't POCS, the Pagan Origins of the Christ Story. The early Christians didn't come up with Jesus' stories by copying facts from other ancient Gods' stories. Jesus is not Mithras with a new name sticker. The early Christians came up with their Jesus "facts" by inventing new stories that wound around ancient (Pagan) purposes. God in the sky, sending His son to Earth. Miracle power. Healing. Raising the dead. Eternal life. POCM has pages explaining each of these Pagan theologies, and more.
To get POCM, you need to see more than the "facts" in the stories. You need to see the purposes that led myth makers to invent those particular "facts."
Powerful benefits
Seeing this two level connection isn't just fun, it's helpful at sorting out what the connections are. We're looking not just for similar facts, we're looking for similar back story.
[TD]Virgin Birth: I bet if you google "copycat Jesus" you come up with dozens of people out to convince you Jesus isn't a "copycat" Pagan God. One way they know is, Jesus' virgin birth is unique.
One fellow puts it so >>[/TD]
[TD]In almost all of the pagan parallels, a god or a goddess has sexual intercourse with the woman/goddess. ...One fact, among many, which has seemed to escape the minds of the 'pagan parallel proponents' (say that three times fast), is that after sexual intercourse, you are no longer a virgin![/TD]
Chances are you wouldn't see all this if you didn't know about the Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth.
(If you think this is cool, you'll maybe like these two back stories, spell and cup, over at Pagan Ideas > Miracles.)
Part of the problem may be you haven't stumbled across the right books. The idea that Christianity borrowed from Paganism dates back to the 1400s, when anti-Catholic protestants began finding Pagan ideas in the Roman church.
By the mid to late 1800s archeology had uncovered and translated Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian texts a thousand years older than the earliest hint of Judaism. The legends in these texts proved striking parallels with Old Testament legends, leading reasonable people to realize many OT bible stories were knock offs of the older middle eastern myths. Eager but incautious professional scholars came up with a similar myth-by-myth-copy theory for the New Testament stories about Jesus.
By the 1950s the myth-by-myth theory had pretty much withered for lack of evidence. In recent decades it's been replaced by:
[TD]Academics writing books or sourcebooks focused on a single feature of ancient religion—daemons, miracles, life after death, divine births, magic God-sent dreams, etc. — and including Christianity as just another example of how ancient religious thought worked.
Second, most scholars of religion, particularly of Christian religion, are . . . Christians. Liberal or conservative (bible-wise), their scholarship isn't about whether Christianity is true. Their scholarship is about how Christianity is true. Being scholars, they've heard about Christianity's Pagan origins, but being Christians, they don't believe it. You're not going to hear about Christianity's Pagan origins from them.
[TD]
[TD]
[TD]
Non-crazy people, including real scholars not in departments of religion or theology, writing Jesus theory genera books pointing out the lack of first century AD evidence for a historical Jesus, from which they conclude first century Christianity was about a mythic Jesus based on Old Testament prophesies. The Galilean legends were added in the second century.[/TD]
[TD][/TD]Ernest undisciplined amateurs repeating and elaborating the mistakes of the 19th century mythicists.
On the other hand, if where you've been looking is church or the popular culture, then of course you've been disappointed. The guys in churchare in church because they don't believe Christianity has Pagan origins, so they're not going to tell you. And popular culture? MSNBCABCBS doesn't know or care.
[/TD]The people who care enough about Christian origins to study and write about Christian origins—to be "scholars" of the subject—generally care exactly because they start with the idea that Christianity is true—that it doesn't have Pagan origins.They aren't scholars of whether Christianity is true, they're scholars of how it is true.
[/TD]
[TD]Samuel Cheetham "An English divine of the Established Church, wrote a history of the Christian Church ... but is best known for his Dictionary of Christian Antiquities,"[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]H. A. A. Kennedy. A Christian theologian[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]J. Gresham Machen "One of the most articulate defenders of orthodox Christian theology against the liberalizing and rationalizing trends of the early twentieth century"[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]A. D. Nock, Doctor of Divinity and famous Christian apologist[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]Hugo Rahner, Catholic Priest and Christian theologian.[/TD]
Sign up for World Religion 101 at your nearest college, and you'll hear plenty about the similarities and differences between Christianity and other modernreligions. To see what I mean, just surf to the course descriptions at your favorite university's classics or religion departments, say classics atHarvard. Lots of comparisons there, right? Christianity compared to Judaism, Christianity compared to Islam, Christianity compared to Hinduism, Christianity compared to Buddhism—that we got plenty of.
Now, look for courses about Christianity compared to Osiris-ism, or Christianity compared to Mithras-ism, or Eleusis-ism, or Platonism, orany ancient Pagan religion or philosophy. Find anything? Nope. There's nothing there. Nothing! That is astounding.
After all, Christianity began in the middle of Pagan culture. Before they converted, many of the early Christians were Pagans. Yet of any similarity between ancient Pagan ideas and ancient Christian ideas, our modern culture knows nothing. Nothing! It's as if three thousand years of western religious history never happened.
Why?
Because no one thinks to ask. Preacher, lay Christian, conservative or liberal Christian scholar, or disinterested non-Christian, we all see Christianity as a watershed—there were primitive polytheistic pre-Christian religions, then there was Christianity. We see it that way because our modern culture's ideas about Christian origins come from the Christian version of the story of Christian origins, the version written by early Christians, for Christians, retelling the story so the facts fit Roman Christian theology.
And Roman Christian theology imagined Big Bang Christianity: miraculous, unique, discontinuous. There were primitive polytheistic pre-Christian religions, then Jesus brought radical new (Jewish-ish, but new) ideas about God and Man. That's the Christian history. That's how we see it.
How did the Christian version come to be the only one we know about? Here's how:
For starters, the only version of Christian origins that survived antiquity was the version written by the victorious Roman Christians.
[TD]
[TD]The regulation history of Christian origins was written by a Roman Catholic bishop. After the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity (in 312 AD) he had his chum Eusebius write a history of early "post-Gospel" Christianity. Eusebius wasn't just the Emperor's chum, he was also the Bishop of Cesarea. A Christian. Our oldest history of Christian origins, Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, was written by Christians, for Christians. It gives the Roman Christian side of the story.
How about other Christian versions of Christian origins? They were suppressed. One reason our received version of the origins story sounds plausible is, there isn't any other version to compare it too.
[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]There was no Pagan side of the Christian origins story. Even well into the second and third centuries AD Christianity didn't make much of an impression on the Romans and Greeks, and certainly back at the very beginning, in the first century, no Pagan—no Greek or Roman or Jew or Thracian or Egyptian, etc—knew or cared enough about the tiny new sect to write a history of it. There is no contemporary Pagan side of the Christian origins story.
There were later Pagan accounts. Celsus wrote one in the 2d century. Porphyry of Tyre wrote fifteen books about—against—Christianity in the third. But neither of these books were histories, they were commentaries based on Christian writing and legend. Unfavorable commentaries. And anyway, they were banned and burned, and survive only in fragments.[/TD]
It ain't so.
Why it ain't so is what POCM is about.
Enraged over a point of doctrine about the true nature of Christ, Cyril, Christian patriarch of Alexandria, incites a pogrom against people who deny his own theory. Cyril's co-religionists assert their faith by burning the homes of doctrinal opponents and driving entire communities from the city. On a fateful day Hypatia—the non-Christian scholar, philosopher, and teacher renown throughout the Mediterranean world for her devotion to learning and enlightenment—steps onto her chariot to ride through town to the great Library of Alexandria. A mob gathers, chanting slogans against her.
[TD]The rioters close in, jamming Hypatia's chariot to a stop, grabbing her, jerking her down and out into the street where eager hands strip the woman naked. Jeering they drag her to a church where Christian officials promptly butcher her.
Gibbon describes >[/TD]
[TD]"[H]er flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster shells, and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames."
[Decline and Fall Ch. 47]
[/TD]
History is written by the winners. You've never heard about the Pagan origins of Christianity because as Christians institutionalized the Church starting in the 300s AD, their reaction to Pagan competition was to deny and suppress Pagan teaching. To burn Pagan writings. To drive dissident communities into the desert. To murder Pagan scholars.
It worked well. So well that the word Pagan is a pejorative. So well that much of our modern understanding of these faiths is available only because scholars have reconstructed Pagan theology by reading between the lines of anti-Pagan Christian propaganda—the original Pagan literature having been lost in the bonfires of suppression.
You know the Christian version of the history of religion because the Paganism was suppressed.
"Pagan" has several meanings.
The ancient Pagans didn't call themselves "Pagans." For Romans before the fourth century AD "pagus" was a Latin word meaning "village" or "countryside." A paganus was a countryman or villager, the nuance suggesting hick.
The meaning of "pagan" as "non-Christian" was invented by Christians. It happened like this: Christianity's watershed political success was in the city of Rome, with the conversion of the emperor Constantine in312 AD. Constantine and later Christian emperors had unlimited power to tax, outlaw, regulate and otherwise suppress competing religions—and they used it. These powers were strongest in the cities. In the countryside, away from the bloody swords of Roman suppression, the old religions hung on. In the villages. Among the Pagani.
By the late forth century, Christian church officials used the term "Pagan" to deride the old pre-Christian faiths, calling them Hick religions.
Atthis "non-Christian ancient religion" meaning of "Pagan" —without the "hick" nuance—is the one I have in mind. When you and I talk about Christianity's "Pagan" origins, we'll be talking about ancient religion amd civilization in general.
The River Of God
A New History Of Christian Origins
by Greg Riley, PhD
[TD][/TD]
[TD]A Harvard trained professor of religion traces the history of earliest Christianityand the origin of Christian ideas—in Greek philosophy and pagan religion.[/TD]
If this book had been around in 1998, POCM would have been unnecessary.
The Homeric Epic and the Gospel of Mark
by Dennis MacDonald
[TD][/TD]
[TD]Turns out the ancients had this literary convention called "mimeses," in which they deliberately mimicked the structure and ideas of other ancient writers, in particularHomer. That, says professor MacDonald, is what the New Testament writer author Mark did with his gospel.
Which means, some "facts" about Jesuswere borrowed direcly from Homer's Iliad. Who'd a thunk it?[/TD]Sound nutty? Yes it does. Which is why the professor supports his thesis with oodles of ancient evidence, and a meticulous, rigorous reasoning. There's so much evidence, it's can be tough to keep going. You may well groan, "Enough already, you've convinced me!"
The Historical Evidence for Jesus
by G.A. Wells
[TD]
Can We Trust the New Testament
Thoughts on the Reliability of Early Christian Testimony
by G.A. WellsThe Jesus Legend
by G.A. WellsThe Jesus Myth
by G.A. Wells
[TD]Wells is an emeritus professor of German and amateur scholar of Christian origins. His theory is either that
» there never was a real Jesus, the New Testament Jesus is a myth, or
» there was a real Jesus, the New Testament Jesus is a myth.[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]Intricate deconstructions of the orthodox legend of Christian origins.[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]Wells thinks Paul's Jesus was a made up mythical Hellenistic godman, in evidence of which he dwells on the lack of evidence, in Paul and all the other first century epistles, of any history of Jesus' life on earth. The Jesus of the NT gospels was invented later.[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]It's hard to remember what's in each of Well's books, there's repetition and overlap. I'd suggest starting with The Historical Evidence for Jesus.[/TD]
The Jesus Puzzle
Did Christiantiy Begin With a Mythical Christ
by Earl Doherty
[TD][/TD]
[TD]Amateur scholar Doherty lays out his detailed version of the theory that there never was a person Jesus, and Christianity began entirely from a myth.[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]a good look at the state of the evidence about a "historical" Jesus[/TD]Doherty, like professor G.A. Wells, notices that Paul and the other first century New Testament authors never give details about the Jesus of later Galillean legend. From which Doherty concludes there never was a Galillean Jesus; Christianity started wiht a mythic godman, later generations invented the earthly "history."
Good use of primary sources, but this theory can only be correct if a number of odd coincidences explain away evidence that does seem most naturally to point to a real person Jesus.
[TD][/TD]
[TD]A scholar's detailed review of the Pagan-Origins scholarship from the 15th century through the early 1990s.[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]Details of why the "scholarly" conclusions on each side are agenda driven. For example, there's a nice refutation of AD Nock's linguistic argument.[/TD]
This book is widely quoted in the academic literature. It's got lots of good information and tons of references to the literature.
But, because Professor Smith thinks obscure is clever, the writing is terrible. This book will not make sense until you've read A.D. Nock's Early Gentile Christianity and Its Hellenistic Background.
[TD]Here's a sample >>
Jesus, admits Professor Smith quoting the Christian-borrowing scholar Loisy, was a savior-God like Osiris, Attis and Mithras. He was a god who came to earth, died, and saves, etc. etc.
from which, opines Professor Smith,
"little of value can be learned." [!!]
Professor Smith is famous for his anti-borrowing agenda—which is why he's quoted a lot.[/TD]
[TD]"[Jesus] was a savior-god, after the manner of Osiris, and Attis, a Mithra. Like them, he belonged by his origin to the celestial world; like them, he had made his appearance on the earth; like them, he had accomplished a work of universal redemption, efficacious and typical; like Adonis, Osiris, and Attis he ha died a violent death, and like them he had returned to life; like them, he ad prefigured in his lot that of the human beings who should take part in his worship, and commemorate his mystic enterprise; like them, he had predetermined, prepared, and assured the salvation of those who became partners in his passion." [Quoting A. Loisy, The Christian Mystery, in: The Hibbert Journal, 10(1911 - 12), 51]
Of which Smith says:
From such a parataxis of 'likeness', little of value can be learned.
[pages 42 - 43]
Miracles in Greco-Roman Antiquity
A Sourcebook for the study of New Testament Miracle Stories
by Wendy Cotter
Lousy with miracles Like chocolate chips in mama's cookies, miracles were a basic ingredient in ancient people's understanding of how the world works. Every bite—another miracle. The ancient world was lousy with miracles.
Don't believe me, believe the ancients. This excellent sourcebook gives hundreds of examples—250 pages—of ancient miracles recorded by the pens of ancients themselves.
You'll read short excerpts from ancient texts describing Pagan Gods who healed the sick(blindness, paralysis, lameness), raised the dead, exorcised demons, controlled nature, turned water into wine, walked on water, calmed storms, and more.
Well organized, easy to read. Highly recommended.
.
Life After Death
A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion
by Alan Segal
[TD][/TD]
[TD]A 700 page, evidence based history of ancient ideas about eternal life, and how they moved from paganism into Judaism and Christianity.[/TD]
Born Divine
The Births of Jesus & Other Sons of God
by Robert MIller
[TD][/TD]
[TD]Professor Miller compares Jesus divine birth with the divine births of other ancient godmen, Herakles, Pythagoras, Apollonius of Tyana, Plato, Augustus Caesar, Alexander the Great, Theagenes the Olympic Champion.[/TD]
Hellenistic Mystery Religions
Their basic ideas and significance
by Richard Reitzenstein (1861 - 1931)
translated by John Steely
[TD][/TD]
[TD]as far as I can tell this is the only English translation of this highly famous, highly influential, poorly organized, scholarly analysis of the Mystery religions.[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]The good news: Reitzenstein supports his arguments with extended quotations from primary ancient sources.
The bad news is, get this: the quotations are not translated into English, so unless your Greek and Latin are shiny, a very frustrating book.[/TD]
This English version was published in 1978 and is now out of print. You can sometimes find it used at Amazon.com
The Mysteries
Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks
edited by Joseph Campbell
[TD][/TD]
[TD]Twelve essays from the 1930s and 40s dealing with the ancient Mystery religions. Lots of Poindexter stuff.[/TD]Not a good introduction. Worth reading if you're an advanced student.
The Homeric Epic and the Gospel of Mark
by Dennis MacDonald
[TD][/TD]
[TD]Turns out the ancients had this literary convention called "mimeses," in which they deliberately mimicked the structure and ideas of other ancient writers, in particularHomer. That, says professor MacDonald, is what the New Testament writer author Mark did with his gospel.
Which means, some "facts" about Jesuswere borrowed direcly from Homer's Iliad. Who'd a thunk it?[/TD]Sound nutty? Yes it does. Which is why the professor supports his thesis with oodles of ancient evidence, and a meticulous, rigorous reasoning. There's so much evidence, it's can be tough to keep going. You may well groan, "Enough already, you've convinced me!"
Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History
Complete and Unabridged
translated by C. F. Cruse
[TD][/TD]
[TD]the first official history of the Christian Church, written in the fourth century AD[/TD]
The Gospel and the Greeks
by Ronald Nash
What you'll find:
[TD]Because he was a Christian writing for other Christians, Nash (who seems like a smart, likable fellow) was able to write an apologist genre book—one whose tendentious reasoning betrays no expectation of unfriendly critical analysis . His analysis was basically:
[TD]A Christian philosophy professor's easy, readable, affordable roundup of the current state of the apologists' "refutation" of Christianity's Pagan origins.. The more you know, the less persuasive Professor Dr. Nash is.[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]Eighty percent explanation of the mid-20th century scholarly dispute; twenty percent gentle kettle logical refutation. Good chapters explaining the monotheism of the Platonists and Stoics, the Mystery religions and the Gnostics.[/TD]
1. To ignore similar fundamental ideas (soul, heaven, salvation, godman), and to attack outdated mid-20th century Jesus as a myth-by-myth analogue theories,
2. To bring up differences between Pagan myths and Christian myths, and then apply the apologists' difference-proves-no-borrowing rule .
Available used at Amazon .com[/TD]
Early Gentile Christianity and Its Hellenistic Background
by Doctor of Divinity Arthur Darby Nock
[TD][/TD]
[TD]the leading non-borrowing scholar- apologist admits deep similarities between the Pagan mystery religions and Christianity.[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]The canonical believers' reasons why each and every one of those similarities doesn't count.[/TD]First published in 1928 and reissued and updated in 1964, this is the canonical refutation of the late 19th and early 20th century scholarly claims that Christianity borrowed from Paganism. This essay is widely cited as an authority, "Dr. Nock has refuted the German School. . .", and the arguments Nock developed here are the same ones believers use today.
[TD]
[/TD]
[TD]Nock was a Harvard professor who read and understood the scholarship. He did not—could not, in that generation when scholars knew better—deny the deep similarities between Christianity and the Pagan mysteries.[/TD]
For example >>
[TD]The Eucharist ... is in line with contemporary mysteries, which purported to represent the sufferings and triumph of a god, in which his worshipers sympathized and shared....The Eucharist is a mystery, as mysteries were then understood, and Christianity, the heir of Judaism, has also an essential spiritual continuity with Hellenistic religion.
[pg 72]
The 1964 Harper Torchbook edition is expandedwith Nock's later thoughts and arguments.
It is out of print, but often available used through Amazon
The Quest of the Historical Jesus
by Albert Schweitzer
[TD][/TD]
[TD]In 1906 Schweitzer published this detailed account of 19th century's critical scholarship about the New Testament and Jesus.[/TD]You can't understand 20th century scholarship NT scholarship unless you read this famous and influential book.
There is no contemporary record thatJesus existed. None. There is no Christian record. There is no non-Christianrecord. I am not making this up. It's part of mainstream modern scholarship.
No non-Christian alive when Jesus lived ever mentions seeing Jesus or hearing Jesus—or even hearing about Jesus!
They don't mention the star that heralded His birth.
They don't mention Herod's slaughter of boy babies.
They don't mention crowds gathered to hear Him preach.
They don't mention His trial.
They don't mention His crucifixion.
They don't mention His resurrection.
They never mention anything He said, or anywhere He went, or anything He thought, or anything He said, or anything He did.
No non-Christian alive when Jesus lived ever mentions Him at all. Not once.
What about the Christian record made by people who knew Jesus? There isn't any! The second part of the New Testament—Acts and letters by Paul and other apostles was of course written after Jesus died, by people who didn't know Him. They say so themselves.
As to the "first" part of the New Testament, the Gospels, partly because Mark mentions the Jewish-Roman war of the 70s AD, and because Matthew and Luke quote Mark, the consensus of mainstream modern scholarship is that the gospels were written decades after Jesus' death—by people who never met Him! Some scholars guess the gospels were written late in the first century, maybe forty or fifty years after Jesus died. But that's just a guess—a low ball guess. The gospels are not mentioned by in any other Christian writings—Clement, Polycarp, Ignatius, for example—until about 150 AD. Many scholars guess they existed before 150 AD—but a scholarly guess is still just a guess.
There is no contemporary record that Jesus existed. None. That's not a guess, that's a fact.
Hey, wait a minute—the uniqueness of Christ is a point the canonical writings hit pretty hard. After Jesus or not, don't the early Christian writings prove Christianity is unique?
[TD]No, they don't. The early Christians did not think Jesus was unique. Here at the Pagan Origins web site, you've read directly what the earliest Christians --Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Origen --wrote about Jesus and the Pagan Gods. They said that He was similar. Remember Justin Martyr?[/TD]
[TD]"we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter"?{St. Justin Martyr, First Apology]
[/TD]
What the New Testament and other early Christian writings prove is that after Jesus died, Christians eventually came to believe He was the uniquely true God.
The gospel describes John the Baptist baptizing people. The gospel doesn't describe where John got the idea of baptism. The gospels describe Jesus' miracles; they don't describe where the idea of miracles came from.
ask yourself:"What about what I'm hearing was new and unique with Christianity, and what was already part of other religions in a culture where over and over again new religions were built with old parts?"
When they get to the part about the uniqueness of Jesus' life and theology, remember your co-religionists, Origen, Tertullian, Justin Martyr, and how they knew Jesus was not unique.
You'll know you're hearing about stuff that predated Christianity by hundreds of years—in a culture where over and over people built new religions out of old parts.
Wow!
Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.95 (45 BC)
We gotta 'splain not just the narrow fact Christianity began, but the wider fact Christianity began in the middle of ancient western culture where lots of people had similar ideas.
Greg
Here's where we are. In POCM's Facts section you read ancient texts and discovered that Christianity and Paganism shared lots of ideas. Idea wise, Christianity and Paganism were similar. In this Reasons part of POCM we're thinking about possible explanationsof those similarities. The different menu items here —Choices, Borrowing, Faith, etc.— look at various possible explanations of those similarities.
Some folks think they know Jesus never existed. I myself am not smart enough to be sure. Maybe He did, maybe He didn't. I don't know. I don't think it matters, at least as far as knowing where our stories about Jesus come from. Our stories about Jesus were made up. They are Pagan ideas, written down by Pagan minds.
Some Christian people think "myth" means the same thing, all made up, never existed. It doesn't. It could be Jesus was a real historical person, a real person tarted up with mythic stories.
Far fetched? Not really. We know for sure some of His followers did this. There are plenty of ancient non-canonical gospels about Jesus, full of wild ass sayings and miracles of Jesus. So even if Jesus really was a historical person, it is absolutely certain early Christians told myths about Him. The only question is, are all their magic stories made up and all our magic stories are real and historical.
At POCM I am NOT saying Jesus never existed.
You've maybe come across web sites or books listing amazing coincidences between our Jesus stories and stories about other ancient Gods. Born in a manger (or cave) onDecember 25th, with a virgin mother and a father named Joseph. Had twelve disciples. Died on a cross, arose on day three. Like that.
Trouble is, it ain't so. The only place you find these similarities is in modern books where an ernest amateur quotes someone quoting someone. Trace these claims back to their 19th century origins, and you'll discover some wild eyed fellow just made them up. Just made them up. The ancient evidence simply does not include Gods with twelve disciples born in mangers on December 25th, or any of this identical-myth stuff. Jesus was not an element-by-element, myth-by-myth direct copy of any other ancient Gods. The Virgin Birth page gives an example in detail; Jesus' birth is not a knock off of Horus'.
At POCM we are NOT talking about Christianity's Pagan origins as a direct copy of some Pagan religion.
Back in the late 1800s, and into the '20s and '30s of the twentieth century, "mythicist" scholars had this theory that lots of ancient peoples had dying and rising Gods. Adonis. Attis. Osiris. Mithras. Tamuz. Dying and rising gods were supposedly a common cultural convention, and, said the mythicists, our stories about Jesus were invented to fit the patterns of the DARG convention.
Eventually, enthusiasm for the dying and rising God theory fizzled out, supposedly for lack of evidence, although scholarly prejudice contributed. I myself don't morn its fizzulation. The evidence for a DARG convention is thin, and the whole thing seems too clever by half.
Christianity- borrowing-from-Paganism-wise, the DARG business is unnecessary. You don't need myth-by-myth DARG parallels to see that the Jesus stories fit nicely with ancient culture's pervasive religious conception of the world.
At POCM we are NOT talking about Christianity's Pagan origins as another example of a DARG cultural convention.
Goshopping for the healthful and refreshing beverage Mountain Dew, and up on the grocery shelf you'll see a number of drinks that are pretty similar to Dew. Sugar water drinks. Fizzy drinks. In aluminum cans. Twelve ounce cans. With pop tops.
Did the fine people at Mountain create Dew by copying the idea of putting fizzy sugar water in a twelve-ounce pop-top aluminum can from anyone in particular? From Coke? From Pepsi? Fanta? No they didn't. Fizzy sugar water in a twelve-ounce pop-top aluminum can is soda. The idea of sodais part of our culture. Dew looks like all the other soda drinks, not because it is a direct copy of any one of them, but because our modern culture has the idea of soda, and Dew is just another one. When a modern person makes a new soda, these are the things we put in.
[TD]At POCM, that's what "borrowing" is.
Borrowing just means "Accepting and incorporating the ideas of your culture," or, "Absorbing the ideas of your culture."
POCM isn't about a sneaky ancient conspiracy. I haven't uncovered the hidden key to the True Meaning of the bible. POCM's answer is simple and pedestrian:Christianity was the social product of its time and place. It didn't invent its core concepts —heaven, hell, souls, eternal life, miracles, prophecies, angels, Gods, sons of God, walking talking godmen, etc.—it got them from the culture in which it developed. When ancient people made a new religion, these are the things they put in.
[/TD]
[TD]By the way: Different[/TD][TD]Is Dew different from Coke? Sure. Coke is dark; Dew is light. Coke's can is red; Dew's is green. Coke tastes like ... Coke. Dew tastes like Dew. But Dew and Coke are both sodas.
Our idea "soda" describes only some features of a drink—fizzy sugar water in a can. Other features are not part of the "soda" concept—flavor, color, can color, price, etc. This means that every soda is different from every other soda. Coke is different from Pepsi, is different from Fanta, is different from Dew.
Jesus' apologists like to imagine that Jesus is not a Pagan God because Jesus is different is some detail or other from other Pagan Gods. We'll talk about this more later.[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
Up till now POCM has simply laid out the facts. You've seen the evidence, directly from the pens of the ancients themselves. Before slavery, demons, godmen, heaven, hell, miracles, prophecies, and God, sons of God, salvation, etc. became part of Christianity, they were all parts of other ancient religions.
's Reasons section is about what those facts mean, Christianity-borrowing-from-Paganism-wise. I know you don't care what I believe, so the point is not for me to type out my opinion. Instead, we'll use the work of scholars and Jesus' apologists to list the possible explanations of all those Pagan Christian similarities. Then we'll see which explanations are comprehensive and consistent.
Why "comprehensive and consistent"? Because if an explanation isn't comprehensive, it can't explain all the facts. And if it isn't consistent, then it contradicts itself. Theories that can't explain the facts, or that contradict themselves are not to be believed.
Chances are, back when you started POCM, the only ancient religion you knew any definite facts about was Christianity. Because you had nothing to compare it to, Christianity naturally looked unique. Now you've read POCM's Facts sections and you know lots of stuff about lots of ancient religions. Now you know ancient religions, Christian and Pagan, shared ideas.
We want to explain all the facts. We want to explain more than just Christianity had a miracle working, prophecy fulfilling godman, and salvation, and heaven and hell, and initiation rituals, and dreams, and demons, etc.; we want to explain how lots of religions back then had those things. We want to explain how Christianity and Dionysus-ism, and Isis-ism, and Mithras-ism, and Adonis-ism, and Eleusis-ism had miracle working, prophecy fulfilling godmen (and goddessgals), and salvation, and heaven and hell, and initiation rituals, and dreams, and demons, etc.
Explanations that are not comprehensive can not explain all the facts. Theories that are unable to explain the facts are not to be believed.
We're looking for an analysis that gives the same answer every time it's applied to similar sets of facts. If we reason that this fact about Jesus implies that conclusion about Jesus, then a similar fact about Osiris should imply the same conclusion about Osiris. Otherwise the difference between Jesus and Osiris is not the facts about J and M, the difference is that we rigged our analysis to make similar facts lead to different conclusions.
How this works is maybe not clear. Let me 'splain...
The ADPNoB rule is the go-to argument filling up many famous
Judgment before Osiris, c. 1400 BC
To be clear, apologists say the ADPNoB rule works like this:
Fact: The stories about Jesus are different in some detail from the stories about Osiris.
Conclusion: Jesus was not borrowed from Osiris.
eg
AD Nock
BM Metzger
Ron Nash
JZ Smith
[TD]Let's see if the apologists believe their own ADPNoB rule. We'll test the rule by applying it not to Christianity and Osiris-ism, but to Christianity and Judaism. Lets list the first few facts that come to mind:
The Christian three-headed God is different from Judaism's one-headed God.
Christian salvation is different from Jewish salvation.
Christian baptism is different from Jewish baptism.
The Christian Eucharist is different from Judaism's Eucharist—does Judaism even have baptism and a Eucharist?[/TD]
[TD]By the way[/TD][TD]The very smart, very educated, very famous arch apologistReverend Bruce Manning Metzger made a very big deal out of differences. He never met a Pagan-Christian similarity he couldn't look at closely enough to discover a difference in some detail or another. Proving, he imagined, that Christianity didn't borrow ideas from Paganism.[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
Now, people argue about how much Christianity inherited from Judaism, but no one argues it got nothing from Judaism. The ADPNoB rule has taken us to a conclusion that is wrong.
Let's recap. Our search for consistency led us to apply the ADPNoB rule to a different pair of ancient religions, and when we did that we discovered the ADPNoB rule gives an answer that is wrong. Silly. The ADPNoB rule itself does not work. The rule does not work. The conclusions suggested by the rule can not be trusted.
In the apologists' ADPNoB analysis of Jesus and Osiris, the real difference between Jesus and Osiris isn't the basic facts about the two walking, talking, miracle working godmen who died, came back to life, and now live in heaven where they judge the dead. The real difference comes from the simple fact that the ADPNoB analysis is rigged so that overwhelmingly similar sets of facts are imagined to be unrelated.
When someone gives you a "reason" that only works in the one place it has to work for their theory to be true, and that on other situations gives a completely different answer, you should not believe their analysis.
I say it, but you shouldn't believe it—unless my reasoning also works in other similar situations. Unless, for example I say the other ancient religions, Dionysus-ism, Mithras-ism, Attis-ism, Osiris-ism, etc., all picked up their similar ideas from the culture around them, rather than that they all invented heaven, hell, godmen, daemons, etc., all on their own.
POCM's analysis does say each of these religions borrowed—absorbed—their ideas from the culture around them. POCM's analysis is comprehensive and consistent. Hurray Greg! Hurray!
Tim Spalding
Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism
by Franz Cumont
[TD][/TD]
[TD]The history of how middle eastern Gods (the Great Mother, Cybele, Ma-Bellona, Men, Judaism, Sabazius, Anahita, etc. ) came to worshiped in Rome.[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]Why they came to Rome.[/TD]SEE! how religious borrowing actually happened in the Roman empire!
Doctrinal statement, Liberty Baptist Theological Seminar
founder
Liberty University
The easy way
We'll get to a roundup of the content of Chrisitan origins scholarhsip in a minute, but first let's talk about can we maybe bypass reading the ancient texts ourselves, and just accept the stuff we get from smart scholar people.
[TD]Believing what we're told sounds like a good idea. It's what we do for physics and chemistry. And like those sciences, Christian origins is a complicated subject. Lots of people way smarter than me have spent years learning facts about Schrodinger's equation, and stochastic equilibrium, and Jesus. They know buckets of stuff you and I will never know. For quantum mechanics and polymer chemistry the easiest, quickest thing for us to do is find out what the smart fellows say. If we do the same for Christian origins, then the answers we learn will be just as good as science's, right?[/TD]
[TD]Man up[/TD][TD]Choosing to believe what we're told, rather than thinking for ourselves, is servile and immoral.
Man up. Read the evidence. Decide for yourself.[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
As good as this idea sounds—and in Christian apologetics "scholarship" is the coin of the realm—Christian origins is different from science in an important way: Science can be tested. 
For example, Greg's equation and Schrodinger's equation both predict Ψ, the quantum wave function describing the kinematics of elementary particles. Smart people might argue over which equation is correct, but they can do more than argue, they can do experiments to check. Those experiments have been done. Schrodinger's equation correctly predicts and describes the results of experiments, Greg's does not. So, although it is possible to develop grand theories of physics based on Greg's equation, no one does—because, again, Greg's equation contradicts observation.
Christian origins are different. Christian origins theories can't be tested by experiment. New Testament scholar Colin Roberts says the writing on papyrus fragment p52 indicates this copy of the Gospel of John was written in the first half of the 100's AD. New Testament scholar Brent Nongbri says the writing doesn't do that. Who's right? There is no straightforward real world observation available to tell. Not only is it possible to spin theologies based on NT scholar Robert's silly claim, people do.
This creates problems for folks trying to decide about Chrisitian origins the easy way.
There is no consensus. It is not possible to find out what all the smart people believe, because, on lots and lots of basic stuff, they don't all believe the same thing.
Second, people make stuff up about what "scholars believe." Chase after "scholarship" a while, and you'll see there's often a distance between what scholars say, and what people say scholars say. Just because Dr. This or That on Youtube tells you there are four facts about Jesusus's resurrection that all serious scholars agree on, doesn't mean that there really are. There might be. Or there might not be, and the guy telling you there are just made it up, or he's repeating something he heard from someone who heard it from someone who made it up. Which brings us to...
Problem number C: lots of New Testament scholarship is not distinguishable from mythology. Remember, POCM-wise "myth" means facts somebody made up to fit the answer they already knew is true. Re-read the Liberty University Doctrinal statement at the top of this page. Lots of nice self-styled scholars doing New Testament history pick up their old books already knowing that Jesus was real and the bible is true. As they do what they imagine to be scholarship, they line up each new fact to the conclusion they started with, and if the fit isn't maybe perfect, they invent facts to fill in the empty spaces.
This isn't dishonest. Remember, they already know the answer. They're just filling stuff in the way it must have happened. You think I'm making this up? Here's a true story.
In 1935 a New Testament scholar guy named Colin Roberts came out with an article, An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library, about P52,
P52 Verso
There's another verse'o John on the recto.an itsy scrap of ancient paperus on which he'd found fragments of our Gospel of John. Ho hum. Recognizing gospel scrap spit-billion three puts you at the back of a long line. The big deal about Professor Roberts' scrap is that he gave it a date—125 AD(± 25 years) —that was generations closer to Jesus than any other known New Testament fragment (about 200 AD, if you're taking notes).
That's how P52 entered New Testament scholarship. To this day Colin Roberts' P52 date, 125 AD (± 25 years), is given out as the received wisdom of settled science in NT Studies 101 syllabuseses, graduate thesisuseses, academic articles, Sunday sermons, and Is The Resurrection of Jesus Real? debates.
P52 comes up a lot because its early date proves Jesus is real. Honest. The Gospel of John dates from no later than 125 AD, maybe as early as 100 AD. P52 proves that. What's more P52 comes from Egypt and Jesus from Galilee, so allowing time for social diffusion probably John must almost certainly have been written decades earlier, very close to the time of Jesus himself, meaning the gospel was probably almost certainly written by a disciple of Jesus, meaning it is first hand, or almost certainly no later than second hand, proving the stuff in the gospel is probably mostly true, meaning Jesus is real.
P52—the date of P52—is a big deal.
"Scholars of the New Testament have used and abused papyrological evidence"
On account of the date of P52 is way important, you'd figure the science behind the 125 AD date would be heavily investigated by New Testament scholars, right? You'd be wrong.
Colin Roberts came up with his P52 date with handwriting analysis, "...this claim rests solely upon considerations of paleography," (page 12). Roberts came up with his number by comparing the letters, α-β-γ-etc., on P52 with the letters on five, count 'em five, samples of datable early second century handwriting, and one sample from 153 AD. That's it. His report mentions no handwriting samples from the late 2d century. His report mentions no handwriting samples from the 3d century. On this basis, we know Jesus is real.
[TD]1
Teacher, teacher, why do they call it "P52"?
Because if they called it, "The Supreme Court of Zimbabwe" people would get confused. Now shut up and listen.[/TD]
[TD]In spite of what people tell you scholar-Professor Roberts said in his 1935 article, the 1935 article does not give the date of P52 as 125. He gives the date as in "the first half of the second century." (see page 16). He does not say that AD 125 is more likely than AD 150. Not that this detail matters because...
[/TD][TD]2[/TD]
[TD]Professor Roberts does not describe his scientific method. Because he didn't have one. Again, according to his paper what he did was he felt that in a general way P52 looked like a couple undated maybe [!!] early second century documents, and in a general way like four documents datable to 94, 98, 117, and 127 AD. Also, some of the A's looked similar. And in a general way P52, he thought, looked not like one [!] letter from 153 AD. That's it.
In fact Prof Roberts himself wasn't convinced, but he showed a photo of P52 to some chums, and they convinced him to be firm. If these fellows had actual repeatable, testable science guiding their analysis, Prof. Roberts' doesn't mention that either.
P52 dates to the first half of the 2d century AD because Colin Roberts thought it does. Well, actually he didn't, but some friends did and he went along. That is the basis of seven decades of P52 scholarship. I am not making this up.
[/TD][TD]3[/TD]
[TD]On the basis of one nice man's invention, unsupported by any scientific method, without any description of what criteria were relied on, or on what basis those unnamed criteria were imagined to be relevant, without any photo or reproduction of the manuscripts P52 was compared with, the "early 2d century" dating of P52 has been accepted by NT scholars for seventy years. Do some scholars argue? Some. But many—most—don't. And nobody checked.
Nobody checked.
For seventy years scholars opined without recourse to the published manuscript evidence--because the evidence wasn't published. NT scholars, fancy ones with big names, used Roberts' result—built theories and theologies on the result—without caring to check whether it was correct. In-fucking-credible.[/TD][TD]4[/TD]
[TD]In 2005 a Yale grad student, Brent Nongbri, wrote. The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel.Harvard Theological Review 98:23-52.
Nongbri, get this, published photos of Colin Roberts' comparison texts. Seventy years after the fact. And he included photos of other comparison tests he'd collected himself. Including, get this, texts from the relevant early 3d century.
Nonbri sums up: "...we as critical readers of the New Testament often use John Rylands Greek Papyrus 3.457, also known as P52, in inappropriate ways, and we should stop doing so." [Abstract][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
And >>
[TD]...What emerges from this survey is nothing surprising to paleographers: paleography is not the most effective method for dating texts, particularly those written in a literary hand. Roberts himself noted this point in his edition of P52. The real problem is the way scholars of the New Testament have used and abused papyrological evidence.....What I have done is to show that any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for P52 must include dates in the later second and early third centuries. Thus, P52 cannot be used as evidence to silence other debates about the existence (or non-existence) of the Gospel of John in the first half of the second century. Only a papyrus containing an explicit date or one found in a clear archaeological stratigraphic context could do the work scholars want P52 to do.[/TD]
[TD] [/TD]
[TD]Brent Nongbri, 2005. The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel. Harvard Theological Review 98:23-52. Get your own pdf copy.
Myth making
Was P52 written in 125 AD, or 225 AD, or 1925 AD? I wouldn't have a clue. The point isn't the date of P52, the point is what Colin Roberts' story tells us about the institutions of New Testament scholarship. The news isn't good.
But other New Testament scholars did—and still do!— accept New Testament scholar Colin Roberts' sloppy silliness. It's as if in 1935 Colin Roberts' also claimed to have built a perpetual motion machine, but he couldn't say what parts he used, and he didn't actually report any motion. It's as if he did that, and got his research published in the Journal of Physics, and for seventy years physicists around the world accepted perpetual motion, and put papers about it in the high tone journals, and flew in big name speakers for symposia about how perpetual motion would cure disease and power the cities of the future — and no one ever said, "Hey wait a second, lets see if perpetual motion actually works."
Listen, you get to believe and be impressed by whatever you want. I myself find it hard to take seriously New Testament "scholarship" that works on a silly claim for, did I mention seventy years, without thinking it would maybe be a good idea to see the fucking data.
And nowadays when New Testament scholars tell you they still believe P52 is early, remember these guys had the same opinion before someone else bothered to look at the actual facts. As New Testament scholars, they believe what they believe. They don't need no stinkin' facts.
[TD]The point of the P52 story is that when the institutions of NT scholarship say "New Testament Scholarship" they include stuff whose facts have been invented and adjusted whatever way it takes to make Jesus real. And that, POCM-wise, is exactly what "mythology" means.[/TD]
[TD]Doing what myth makers do[/TD][TD]Colin Roberts made up the "fact" that
New Testament scholars who repeat, and after Nogbri cling to, New Testament scholar Roberts' P52 dates are doing what myth makers do—uncritically repeating silly impossible tales that confirm what they know to be true.[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
Doesn't bother me a bit. But let's keep in mind what's going on.
[TD]I've come to see that scholarship about religion is often religion first and scholarship second. Even smart people adjust their scholarly conclusions to fit the religious ideas they started with. Religious institutions promoting religious "scholarship" have religious agendas.
So, although there are smart people who know lots more facts about Christian origins than I do, trying to pick out who the smart people actually are, and what they really believe, and how much their scholarship depends, or doesn't, on their religious convictions, is harder than just taking a while to read the primary ancient evidence yourself, and coming to your own conclusions.[/TD]
[TD]Are you really surprised?[/TD][TD]The New Testament story includes magic dreams, invisible angels, a godman whose magic powers include mind reading, shriveling trees, raising dead people, foreseeing the future, and traveling up and down through the sky.
Are you really surprised that the "scholars" who tell you this stuff is real are myth makers?[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
A roundup of the content of Christian origins scholarship
bet you're thinking, if Christianity really had Pagan origins, Greg would just open a college book and copy out the section saying so. And if I can't give you a quote like that, probably Christianity doesn't have Pagan origins. Right?
[TD]Things aren't that simple. Sure, I can do the quote authority thing: Scholarship > Yes quotes scholars, Harvardous and otherwise, saying Christianity borrowed from Paganism; and Good Books > Yes links you to scholars' books explaining how it happened. But what I can't do is quote a scholar saying all scholars agree with my theory of what happened, Jesus wise. No one can. Jesus wise, scholars don't agree on much.
The truth is, "scholarship" about Christianity is not a rigorous deal. Scholars won't even agree on basic stuff, like what ancient source materials to take seriously. Is it all ancient writings about Jesus, or just the canonical books? "Scholars" don't agree. Scholars write huge long books about Jesus and Christian origins, hundreds of pages, full of this claim and that claim, on and on, and never a mention of the facts that led them to the claims, or that support the claims, or that confirm the claims. Because, here's the secret, the claims aren't based on facts.[/TD]
[TD]Don't tell, it's a secret[/TD][TD]The first point, since you're reading this on the wacky web, is that the Pagan origins of Christianity are not wacky bug- eyed- aliens- at- the- Trilateral- Commission- are- reading- our- mail stuff. The Pagan origins of Christianityare mainstream academic scholarship.
The bug- eyed- aliens- at- the- Trilateral- Commission- are- reading- our- mail stuff—that's true too. Only don't tell. It's a secret.[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
How come scholars disagree; 200 years of Christian Scholarship in 455 words
From the foundation of the church all the way into the early 1800s, thinking people generally believed that the stories in our gospels were based on real events. The details weren't certain—maybe Jesus was divine maybe He wasn't, but He was a real person; maybe the "miracles" were supernatural, maybe they were natural events misunderstood by naive ancients, but at the core of each gospel story was a real event in Jesus' life. Jesus was a real person. The gospels, however ham-handedly, record actual events. That's what pastors believed. And laymen. And professors. No careful, reasoned analysis asked people to believe otherwise.
If New Testament miracles were a martial art, David Friedrich Strauss could kick your ass. 
Then, in 1835, this German kid (at 27 already a university lecturer, fluent in ancient languages and expert in NT scholarship) genamened David Strauss came out with a book he called The Life of Jesus Critically Examined—"the most pestilential book ever vomited out of the jaws of hell." Professor Strauss lost not just his job but his career. Angry believers never allowed him to teach again.
Dr. Strauss' buch went through the gospels story by story, analyzing the best rationalist explanations of each of them. What his book shows, over and over, is that the rationalist explanations were so contrived and self contradictory and far fetched, they couldn't be believed. That was a very big deal, because everybody now saw that the "history" in the gospels could not be real history. The unavoidable implication of David Friedrich Strauss' The Life of Jesus Critically Examined was that—is that—the gospel writers got their "history" by making it up. The gospel stories are not history, they are myth. Oops.
Here's where the relevance to modern scholarship comes in. Not everyone was willing to accept Dr. Strauss' results.
Jesus is a myth scholars, in the late 19th and early 20th century, worked out theories of the pagan origins of the Christ myth. The bible is myth. The New Testament has no meaningful history. Jesus is a myth explained by His parallels with other ancient myths.
Believing scholars who were not bible-literalists preserved the meaning of Christianity by re-imagining the New Testament as history filtered through the beliefs and circumstances of the ancient church. Jesus was a real person. He can be rooted out by picking through the gospel stories for the historical kernel. Thus the Jesus Seminar and much of 20th century academic New Testament scholarship.
Irrelevance of Christian stories
In 1800 AD, the origin of the world, and of life, and of man, were found in the Christian bible. Professors interested in biology found their answers in the bible. Professors interested in geology found their answers in the bible. Life of Jesus broke the levy of belief in bible stories. In 2000 AD, taking your geological history from Genesis is a mark of crack-pottedness.
Christian scholarship splintered. Scholars who understand the NT as myth write articles about...the NT as myth. Scholars who imagine the bible is literally true are unimpressed, and uninterested. Ditto the Jesus Seminar historical rationalists. Etc. Scholarship about Christianity's origins is busted into little pieces, everyone with their own wildly different theory about what the most basic facts are. Other than occasional long range sniping, scholars in the various camps don't talk to each other. They can't. The other guy insists on gibbering nonsense.
Splitsville leads to...
"There is more historical evidence for Jesus than there is for George Washington"
I get this email from time to time, from nice, ernest people repeating what they heard in church. It's from a group of silly claims that do the rounds among bible literalist Christians. You can do it yourself. Just fill in the famous person blank. There is more evidence for Jesus than there is for: Plato / Alexander the Great / Caesar / Washington / your_famous_person_here.
My answer to these emails runs, "Please list exactly the evidence you have in mind. List the evidence for Washington (Plato / Caesar / etc.). List the evidence for Jesus." They can't, of course. Checking the facts has honestly never occurred to them. And that's the point. That's what Splitsville does to "scholarship." It splits the thinking up into little camps of like minded people, camps where fundamental-axiom-wise everyone agrees with everyone else, and no one checks the facts. Or challenges the basic reasons.The scholarship of Christian believers isn't about whether the Jesus stories are true, it's about how the Jesus stories are true. It's the same for the other side. Fashionable academic scholarship isn't about whether the Jesus People theory is true, it's about how the Jesus People theory is true.
Does this mean Ronald Nash, and Arthur Darby Nock are bad people? Are the Jesus Seminar professors out to cheat and lie? No it doesn't. No they're not. The Christian origins question is a tough one. Honest people disagree, honestly.
What it does mean is that fundamentally none of the scholarship is rigorous, and you can't depend on this scholar, or that one, to tell you what to think.Good Books for this section
The Life of Jesus Critically Examined
first published 1835
by David Friedrich Strauss
translated by George Eliot
[TD][/TD]
[TD]An 800 page cause-and-effect analysis of the gospel stories, that basically destroyed the possibility of any rational defense of gospel literalism.[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]A world-changing classical book that's also fun and easy to read.[/TD]
The The End of Biblical Studies
by Hector Avalos
[TD][/TD]
[TD]Harvard bible Phd Avalos ended up a nonbeliever, His book gives an inside look at the incentives that drain rigor from belief-dependent academic bible scholarship.[/TD]
The Quest of the Historical Jesus
by Albert Schweitzer
[TD][/TD]
[TD]In 1906 Schweitzer published this detailed account of 19th century's critical scholarship about the New Testament and Jesus.[/TD]You can't understand 20th century scholarship NT scholarship unless you read this famous and influential book.
[TD][/TD]
[TD]A scholar's detailed review of the Pagan-Origins scholarship from the 15th century through the early 1990s.[/TD][TD][/TD]
[TD]Details of why the "scholarly" conclusions on each side are agenda driven. For example, there's a nice refutation of AD Nock's linguistic argument.[/TD]
This book is widely quoted in the academic literature. It's got lots of good information and tons of references to the literature.
But, because Professor Smith thinks obscure is clever, the writing is terrible. This book will not make sense until you've read A.D. Nock's Early Gentile Christianity and Its Hellenistic Background.
[TD]Here's a sample >>
Jesus, admits Professor Smith quoting the Christian-borrowing scholar Loisy, was a savior-God like Osiris, Attis and Mithras. He was a god who came to earth, died, and saves, etc. etc.
from which, opines Professor Smith,
"little of value can be learned." [!!]
Professor Smith is famous for his anti-borrowing agenda—which is why he's quoted a lot.[/TD]
[TD]"[Jesus] was a savior-god, after the manner of Osiris, and Attis, a Mithra. Like them, he belonged by his origin to the celestial world; like them, he had made his appearance on the earth; like them, he had accomplished a work of universal redemption, efficacious and typical; like Adonis, Osiris, and Attis he ha died a violent death, and like them he had returned to life; like them, he ad prefigured in his lot that of the human beings who should take part in his worship, and commemorate his mystic enterprise; like them, he had predetermined, prepared, and assured the salvation of those who became partners in his passion." [Quoting A. Loisy, The Christian Mystery, in: The Hibbert Journal, 10(1911 - 12), 51]
Of which Smith says:
From such a parataxis of 'likeness', little of value can be learned.
[pages 42 - 43]
What I find stunning is the huge number of early christians that would die at the hands of animals rather than deny an association with Jesus. Based on the innate need to survive and the fact that no one would die voluntarily for something they don't truly believe, I suspect that it might be a littlepresumptuous on our part to try to 'wash away' this Jesus guy by arranging a comparison between his group and pagans. I don't see history being written by priests either. Many of the early historians were not christians. I think Josephus was, but he wasn't even mentioned in the Western civ books I studied in college.
Actually, I think there may be something to this Jesus thing. I'm gonna check it out cause all the people I've met who say they "believe in him", whatever that means, seem to have an inner peace that the rest don't have. I'll write again after I've learned more about it.
Κυρλι
We've seen the facts. Christianity is full of old ancient Pagan ideas. We've reviewed the possible explanations of those facts.You know all you need to know to make up your own mind about where Christianity came from. Go nuts.
I'm trying to think, but nothing happens.
Curly
The day by day history of Christian origins is gone. Lost. Lots of stuff can not be known.
I don't know whether Jesus was a real person or not. The mythicists' argument is convincing, until you think about the non-mythicist argument. And vice versa. Not enough raw evidence survives to say for sure.
The way to explain and understand Christian origins isn't to slop around four layers deep in Q. The way to explain and understand Christianity is to understand itsconnections to the rest of ancient culture.
No one can trace the path of cultural conventions like slavery or prayer from exactly one place into Christianity, or Mithrasism, or Dionysusism, or Osirisism, etc. The ideas were everywhere. Part of the culture. They got into Christianity the same way they got into Mithrasism, and Dionysusism, and Osirisism—from the culture.
Paul and Mark, Matthew, Luke, John and all the other first Christians understood exactly what a God was, and they thought Jesus was one. So their stories about Him naturally included His God properties. It happened in that order. First they thought he was a God, then they told stories about his God properties.
In their world, Gods had powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Gods' superhuman power let them make prophecies and fulfill them. Gods' power let them heal the sick, walk on water, raise the dead, command storms.
Gods were immortal. Whatever happened to the godman's earthly body, Godmen ascended to heaven, or ruled the underworld, or returned next spring.
Gods taught wisdom that confounded the wicked and blessed the righteous. Some Gods—not all, but some—shared their divine insight with their followers, and the divine wisdom they revealed gave the people who accepted it a better deal in the eternal life after death that ancient people generally believed in.
So, how exactly did Christianity borrow from Paganism?
Paul and Mark, Matthew, Luke and John all believed Jesus was a God-—as their ancient minds understood Gods. So when they sat down to write about His life, they naturally wrote it as they understood it. Jesus was a God who came to Earth—an ancient cultural idea, laid out by ancient people in ancient cultural terms. Gods fulfilled property. Jesus fulfilled prophesy. Gods came down from the sky through mortal women. Jesus came down from the sky through a mortal women. Gods had the power to do miracles. Jesus had the power to do miracles—He even did the same miracles as the other Gods. Gods taught wisdom. Jesus taught wisdom. Gods saved. Jesus saves. Gods died on Earth and went back to they sky. Jesus died on Earth and rode a cloud back up to His God-place in the sky.
Christianity didn't borrow from Pagan religion, Christianity is Pagan religion.
Hey wait, Jesus was Jewish. Yup, He was. Christianity began as a Jewish splinter group. So Paul and Mark and the other early Christians, awash in a world of Pagan ideas, imagined Jesus as a Jewish godman.
Messiah-ness is a good example of how that worked. The Messiah is a Jewish idea—a king sent by the racist tribal god Yahweh to restore Israelite tribal supremacy. But until Christianity, everyone understood the messiah would be a human-person. In fact Theudas, Judas the Galilean, the Egyptian, and the other first-century messiahs were human-people, regular men.The idea of a godman messiah, that was a Christian invention, a mixing of Judaism and Hellenism.
That's how it happened. The first Christians tried to—did—graft Hellenistic Pagan ideas to their Jewish Pagan roots. Jesus is a Jewish Pagan godman. Christianity is a Jewish Pagan mystery religion. Christianity is a Jewish splinter group because most Jews thought that was silly.
And that, boys and girls, is exactly how our blessed Jesus came to be.
Dear Mr. Greg Kane,
With a lot of disappointment I have been reading your website POCM!
I was amazed at how you were able to twist a lot of facts. And how knowingly or unknowingly you were spreading a chaotic noisy logic that you yourself are unable to understand, explain or even properly analyse or document.
You history knowledge seems meagre, and lacks a lot of research to say the least. And therefore you cannot base your arguments on incomplete or twisted knowledge!
Unfortunately you claim to know all the facts about the topic, and with all due respect, you seem only to have superficial knowledge. You build your assumptions on some copied ideas and you keep thinking inside the box and building the argument on incomplete or distorted facts/truths!
But the essence is that you repent and with a humble heart Ask Jesus Christ for Forgiveness.
Pertaining your website, it is only spreading noise, I suggest you correct its content according to well documented historical facts. And be a bit more scientific and unbiased. Everyone who reads your website, and has some History background, and contrary to your claim, would immediately recognise which religion/sect/school of thinking you belong to! You were unable to hide your bias.
It is not acceptable at all that you insult your/our Creator in such a manner.
May our Lord Saviour Jesus Christ remember you in His Kingdom, and hopefully redeem you into eternal life upon his Glorious Return.
The Peace of our creator Jesus Christ be with you.
John Thompson
