Jewish Contributions to Christianity, Monotheism and Individualism

[scottcatchot]

A bold claim, one that is made much more credible if actually supported by actual sources and citations.

Well alot of the proof of Jesus having extended family comes from the bible itself..it mentions many brothers, some by name, and hsving sisters some places are found in MAtt 13:54-56, MArk 3:31-35, and galations 1:19 . He was said to have cousins. John the baptist was a cousin and more mention in Luke 1:36, colossians 4:10. There are other sources that mention brothers there is the box of James that may or may not be accurate. some scholars say the box is ancient but the inscription was probably added later, not so widely known is some other scholars have gone and tested the inscription and say that yes it is really an ancient inscription.. So in reality the debate is still on regarding that... A recent work done by Geneoligist Tony Burroughs shows some very good proof from outside resources regarding the extended family of Jesus.

 

[kamishinkan]

I just saw (partially) an episode on the history channel that went into the family of Yeshua, citing both biblical sources and external sources to establish the accuracy of the episode. It was pretty good, I had studied some of this before. It went into names and familiel relationships.

 

[aplonis]

The dead sea scrolls test for attest to the reliability of the Old Testament.

It must be noted that the entire Dead Sea Scrolls have been under the strict control of Jesuit "scholars" and the vast majority of them not fully disclosed. There is much more there than mere redundant copies of the modern bible. What have they been hiding these many decades?

In due course we shall know as the Huntington Bank repository released the copies of the microfilm to the public domain some few years ago. But they are microfilms of many, tiny bits and pieces as originally photographed before study all those decades ago. So the work to re-assemble the bits and make sense of them must be done all over from scratch. But eventually we shall enjoy an independent interpretation of what was contained therein.

The "official" Dead Sea Scrolls team deliberately released only such docs as closely hold to their own politically correct version of "history". It will be interesting.

Gan Uesli Starling
http://monotheism.us

--
History is but a pack of lies, agreed upon - Napoleon

 

[aplonis]

As far as external evidence , there are two important ones that can be found in Jospehus and Tacitus.

You quote Josephus only when it suits you to do so. Much is also to be inferred from what Josephus did not record. Josephus was an ardent despiser of Herod and more than happy to record anything bad known about him.

Yet Josephus wrote not a word about Herod carrying out any slaughter of children. How can it be that such a nationwide hunt for babies to kill escaped Josephus' attention? Or why did he neglect to record if it were, indeed, known to him?

Gan Uesli Starling
http://monothesim.us

 

[scottcatchot]

Josephus wrote not a word about Herod carrying out any slaughter of children. How can it be that such a nationwide hunt for babies to kill escaped Josephus' attention? Or why did he neglect to record if it were, indeed, known to him?

Gan Uesli Starling
http://monothesim.us

AS to why Josephus did not write about I have no definate answer. I do not know. I would like to point out some things though. One, it wasn't a nationwide hunt. Herod knew where the Messiah was supposed to be born, Bethlehem. During the first century, Bethlehem was about the size of Nazareth which according to Dr. John Mcray at Wheaton College was about 60 acres with a max polulation of about 480 at the beginning of the first century. So how many babies at the right age could there be in a village that size? Not thousands, but there would be a few. On top of that, Herod was a blood thirsty king, He killed members of his own family, he executed lots of people who he thought might challenge him. This was business as usual for him. The fact that Herod killed some babies in Bethehem is not going to captivate the attention of people in the Roman world. There was no CNN, Newspapers, or wide spread multimedia. News did not travel as fast as it does nowadays, especially in such a minor village way in the back hills of nowhere and historians had bigger stories to write.

 

[heretic888]

An interesting discussion thus far.

Unfortunately, it has fallen upon me to refute much of what has been claimed in the previous posts.

The bibliographical test

I shall quote Freke and Gandy's The Jesus Mysteries [citations are in brackets such as these] in regards to this proof:

"The gospels have also been added to and altered over time. The Pagan critic Celsus [circa 170 CE] complains that Christians 'altered the original text of the gospels three or four times, or even more, with the intention of thus being able to destroy the arguments of their critics.' Modern scholars have found that he was right. A careful study of over 3,000 early manuscripts have shown how scribes made many changes [G. Stanton, Gospel Truth?, 1995, p. 35]. The Christian philosopher Origen [185-254 CE], writing in the third century, acknowledges that manuscripts have been edited and interpolated to suit the needs of the changing theological climate:

'It is an obvious fact today that there is much diversity among the manuscripts, due either to the carelessness of the scribes, or the perverse audacity of some people in correcting the text, or again to the fact that there are those who add or delete as they please, setting themselves up as correctors.'

To convey the enormity of the problem, one scholar describes selecting a place in the gospels completely at random (in this case he chose Mark 10:11) and checking to see how many differences were recorded between various early manuscripts for these passages. He discovered 'no fewer than 48 places where the manuscripts differ, sometimes there are only two possibilities, often there are three or more, and in one case there are six!' [G. Stanton, p. 34]

Scholars also know that whole sections of the gospels were added later. For example, originally Mark did not contain any words beyond Chapter 16 verse 8 -- the fear of the women at their discovery of the empty tomb. The so-called 'long ending,' in which the risen Jesus appears to his disciples, is not found in any early manuscripts and yet now appears in nearly all New Testaments [G. Stanton, p. 43]." (p. 145)

Also:

"In 1919 another German scholar, Karl Ludwig Schmidt, published a careful study of the way in which Mark's gospel had been created. He was able to show that the author of Mark had created his gospel by linking together existing smaller stories. The Jesus story had been constructed from pre-existing fragments [I. Wilson, Jesus: The Evidence, 1984, p. 191, note to p. 88. An example of this is the miraculous feeding, which appears twice in Mark, once to 4,000 and once to 5,000. As pointed out by Dr. Taylor, it seems unlikely that these were two separate incidents, particularly since in the second the disciples ask, 'Where could anyone get bread to feed these people in a deserted place like this?', thus being apparently ignorant of the first occasion, which they are reported to have witnessed]." (p. 147)

These "pre-existing fragments" were most likely excerpts from intertestamental Jewish literature:

"To create the Jesus myth the initiates of the Jewish Mysteries also drew on the inter-testamental literature, which had already synthesized Pagan and Jewish mythological motifs. These inter-testamental texts not only echo the Pagan Mysteries but also prefigure Christianity, forming a bridge between the two [W. Barnstone, The Other Bible, 1984, p. 202: 'Since much of the inter-testamental writings were apocalyptic and messianic, the appearance of a figure such as Jesus Christ was not unexpected. Indeed, because of the messianic nature of Jewish pseudepigrapha, many of them were altered and "Christianized" to make them reveal Christian truths.'] The Jewish Syballine Oracles, for example, talk of a coming apocalypse of cosmic fire on the day judgment and peace on Earth for the faithful. They are full of missionary zeal, which is rare in Jewish literature but found both in the Mysteries and in Christianity. They also look forward to the coming of a Christ -- a hope that Christianity claims to fulfill [W. Barstone, pp. 501-503].

Motifs that echo the Mysteries and prefigure Christianity are also found in the Books of Enoch. [As well as influencing the Jesus story, complete passages of these inter-testamental texts were transformed into Christian documents. A whole section from The First Book of Enoch appears in the New Testament Letter of Jude v 5-18.] Like Jesus, Enoch is said to have been physically raised up to heaven [W. Barnstone, p. 485]. On his arrival he is greeted as the 'Son of Man' [G. A. Wells, Did Jesus Exist?, 1975, p.116] -- a title which Jesus will inherit.

This title conveys the idea that Enoch and Jesus are both to be understood as Everyman characters who mythically represent all of mankind. The Hebrew expression son of means 'the embodiment of' [The Son of Man is a term used repeatedly in the inter-testamental literature written in the second century BCE, in Daniel, 1 and 2 Enoch, 4 Ezra and The Psalms of Solomon]. The Son of Man is an embodiment of the idea of the primal Man [....] Just like Jesus, the embodiment of the Logos, the Son of Man in The Books of Enoch is a divine being who has existed with God from the beginning. Also like Jesus, the Enochian Son of Man is called 'a messenger from God', 'the Christ of the invisible God', and 'a light to the Gentiles' [W. Barnstone, p. 485].

The inter-testamental Wisdom Literature tells of the 'righteous man' who is a divine emissary sent to bring wisdom into the world. This figure, who echoes the earlier Pagan 'just man,' becomes the Christian 'righteous man,' Jesus. Like Jesus, he is rejected by humanity [G. A. Wells, p. 55], makes claims that evoke hostility [The Wisdom of Solomon 2 v 13, 16-18, 20], is maltreated, comes into conflict with authorities, dies [The Wisdom of Solomon 4 v 16], and is finally recognized by his enemies as the 'Son of God' [The Wisdom of Solomon 5 v 5]." (pp. 196-197)

And, finally:

"The process through which the original timeless and locationless Jesus story became set in a particular time and place can be seen in the Gospel of Mark. Scholars have noticed that all the passages that mention Galilee are later additions [G. A. Wells, p. 144]. For example, in the line 'And passing along by the sea of Galilee he saw Simon and Andrew,' [Mark 1:16] the words 'by the sea of Galilee' are placed quite ungrammatically in the Greek syntax. This has led most New Testament scholars to believe that they were added to give a geographical location to a story that previously lacked it [G. A. Wells, pp. 71-72]." (p. 200)

G. A. Wells (Who Was Jesus?, 1991) sees further attributions of the Gospels from the Enochian literature:

"Enoch's picture of the final judgment is strikingly paralleled at Matthew 25:31-46. Enoch says that 'the Lord of Spirits seated the Elect One on the throne of his glory'; Matthew reads: 'When the Son of Man shall come in his glory . . . then shall he sit on the throne of his glory.' Both writers go on to describe how the righteous are vindicated while the rest are banished to flame and torment." (p. 170)

There is also the Book of Ecclesiasticus:

". . . the Book of Ecclesiasticus contains the logia of a pre-Christian Jesus. Here are two of his sayings: 'Forgive thy neighbor the hurt he hath done unto thee, so shall thy sins also be forgiven when thou prayest.' 'Lay up thy treasures according to the commandments of the Most High, and it shall bring three more profit than gold.' These are assigned to the Jesus of Matthew's gospel." (G. Massey, The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ, p. 152)

 

[heretic888]

The internal evidence test

Back to Freke and Gandy:

"The most startling contradiction is between the genealogies presented in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. Both authors go to great lengths to show that Jesus is descended from the line of David, as the promised Messiah must be according to Jewish beliefs. Both authors see Jesus as fathered by Joseph. So far, so good. But is Joseph fathered by Jacob, as Matthew claims, or Heli, as Luke claims? From just one generation back the family lineages that the two gospels present are utterly different from each other. And from then on they bear no resemblance to each other at all!" (p. 139)

"The gospels are littered with such inconsistencies. Luke offers us what looks like a convincing piece of historical detail when he tells us that Jesus was born at the time of the census of Quirinus. This took place in 6 CE. Yet Matthew tells us that Jesus was born during the reign of King Herod, who died in 4 BCE. Luke even contradicts himself, stating that John and Jesus were miraculously conceived six months apart in the reign of Herod, but still portrays Mary with child at the time of the census of 6 CE, creating one of the rarely mentioned miracles of the New Testament -- a 10-year pregnancy!

John places the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of his narrative, Matthew at the end. Mark has Jesus teaching only in the area of Galilee, and not in Judea, and only traveling the 70 miles to Jerusalem once, at the end of his life. Luke, however, portrays Jesus as teaching equally in Galilee and Judea. John's Jesus, on the other hand, preaches mainly in Jerusalem and makes only occassional visits to Galilee.

Amazingly, since Literalist Christianity is built upon the historicity of Jesus' death and resurrection, even the events surrounding his crucifixion are not uniformly recorded by the gospels. According to Matthew and Mark, Jesus was both tried and sentenced by the Jewish priests of the Sanhedrin. Yet according to John, Jesus does not appear before the Sanhedrin at all. " (p. 141)

"In Mark and Matthew, the resurrected Jesus appears to his other disciples at Galilee, where they have been specifically sent by divine decree. Yet this stupendous supernatural event does not seem to have impressed itself very clearly on the other disciples, since Luke and the author of the Acts of the Apostles have the risen Jesus appearing in and around Jerusalem. Indeed, according to Acts, not only did they not receive any divine commandment to go to Galilee, but were expressly forbidden from leaving Jerusalem." (p. 142)

"The most telling moment in the gospels, however, is when Mark has Jesus quote from the Old Testament in his arguments against the Pharisees. Nothing surprising about this -- except that Jesus quotes from the mistranslated Greek version of the Old Testament, which suits his purpose precisely, not from the original Hebrew, which says something quite different and unhelpful. That Jesus the Jew should quote a Greek mistranslation of Jewish Holy Scripture to impress orthodox Jewish Pharisees is simply unthinkable. [In Mark 7:1-23 Jesus uses an argument based on the Greek version of the Jewish scripture, in Acts Peter does the same and in Acts 15:13 James does likewise. Matthew 27:9 even mistakenly cites Jeremiah for Zechariah.]" (p. 144)

 

[heretic888]

The external evidence test

The author of the Gospel of Mark exhibits what I. Wilson (p. 36) calls "a lamentable ignorance of Palestinian geography":

"In the seventh chapter, for instance, Jesus is reported as going through Sidon on his way from Tyre to the Sea of Galilee. Not only is Sidon in the opposite direction, but there was in fact no road from Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the first century CE, only one from Tyre. Similarly the fifth chapter refers to the Sea of Galilee's eatern shore as the country of the Gerasenes, yet Gerasa, today Jerash, is more than thirty miles to the southeast, too far away for a story whose setting requires a nearby city with a steep slope down to the sea. Aside from geography, Mark represented Jesus as saying 'If a women divorces her husband and marries another she is guilty of adultery' (Mark 10:12), a precept which would have been meaningless in the Jewish world, where women had no rights of divorce."

According to C. Waite (History of the Christian Religion to the Year Two Hundred, 1992):

"There are also many errors [in the Gospel of John] in reference to the geography of the country. The author speaks of Aenon, near to Salim, in Judea; also of Bethany, beyond Jordan, and of a 'city of Samaria, called Sychar.' If there were any such places, they were strangely unknown to other writers. The learned Dr. Bretschneider points out such mistakes and errors of geography, chronology, history and statistics of Judea, as no person who had ever resides in that country, or had been by birth a Jew, could possibly have committed." (pp. 397-398)

In addition, B. Keeler (A Short History of the Bible, 1965) states:

"The Gospel of John says that Bethsaida was in Galilee. There is no such town in that district, and there never was. Bethsaida was on the east side of the sea of Tiberias, whereas Galilee was on the west side. St. John was born at Bethsaida, and the probability is that he would know the geographical location of his own birthplace." (p. 16)

Also, from The Myth of the Historical Jesus:

"The New Testament story confuses so many historical periods that there is no way of reconciling it with history. The traditional year of Jesus's birth is 1 C.E. Jesus was supposed to be not more than two years old when Herod ordered the slaughter of the innocents. However, Herod died before April 12, 4 B.C.E. This has led some Christians to redate the birth of Jesus in 6 - 4 B.C.E. However, Jesus was also supposed have been born during the census of Quirinius. This census took place after Archelaus was deposed in 6 C.E., ten years after Herod's death. Jesus was supposed to have been baptized by John soon after John had started baptizing and preaching in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberias, i.e. 28-29 C.E., when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea i.e. 26-36 C.E. According to the New Testament, this also happened when Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene and Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. But Lysanias ruled Abilene from c. 40 B.C.E until he was executed in 36 B.C.E by Mark Antony, about 60 years before the date for Tiberias and about 30 years before the supposed birth of Jesus! Also, there were never two joint high priests, in particular, Annas was not a joint high priest with Caiaphas. Annas was removed from the office of high priest in 15 C.E after holding office for some nine years. Caiaphas only became high priest in c. 18 C.E, about three years after Annas. (He held this office for about eighteen years, so his dates are consistent with Tiberias and Pontius Pilate, but not with Annas or Lysanias.) Although the book of Acts presents Yehuda of Galilee, Theudas and Jesus as three different people, it incorrectly places Theudas (crucified 44 C.E.) before Yehuda who it correctly mentions as being crucified during the census (6 C.E.). Many of these chronological absurdities seem to be based on misreadings and misunderstandings of Josephus's book Jewish Antiquities, which was used as reference by the author of Luke and Acts.

The story of Jesus's trial is also highly suspicious. It clearly tries to placate the Romans while defaming the Jews. The historical Pontius Pilate was arrogant and despotic. He hated the Jews and never delegated any authority to them. However, in Christian mythology, he is portrayed as a concerned ruler who distanced himself from the accusations against Jesus and who was coerced into obeying the demands of the Jews. According to Christian mythology, every Passover, the Jews would ask Pilate to free any one criminal they chose. This is of course a blatant lie. Jews never had a custom of freeing guilty criminals at Passover or any other time of the year. According the myth, Pilate gave the Jews the choice of freeing Jesus the Christ or a murderer named Jesus Barabbas. The Jews are alleged to have enthusiastically chosen Jesus Barabbas. This story is a vicious antisemitic lie, one of many such lies found in the New Testament (largely written by antisemites). What is particularly disgusting about this rubbish story is that it is apparently a distortion of an earlier story which claimed that the Jews demanded that Jesus Christ be set free. The name 'Barabbas' is simply the Greek form of the Aramaic 'bar Abba' which means 'son of the Father.' Thus "Jesus Barabbas" originally meant 'Jesus the son of the Father,' in other words, the usual Christian Jesus. When the earlier story claimed that the Jews wanted Jesus Barabbas to be set free it was referring to the usual Jesus. Somebody distorted the story by claiming that Jesus Barabbas was a different person to Jesus Christ and this fooled the Roman and Greek Christians who did not know the meaning of the name 'Barabbas.'"

 

[scottcatchot]

I am finding this discussion enjoyable and appreciate your dedication to your point of view. However, I disagree with you in regards to the Jesus Myth, as does the majority of scholars. The theory that Jesus never existed has been around for a long, long, time but has never become an accepted theory. This is because it is based on a bad hypothesis. In the 19th century, Kersey Graves wrote the World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors anuywhere I have seen comments on this book, including the internet, it has all pointed to the book being very porly done. These same ideas have been recently resufaced by The Jesus Mysteries by Peter Gandy and Timothy Freke. Most of their ideas involve Gnosticism more than CHristianity. You apparently like their book from the many quotes you use from them. I will address more indepth the problems with this book in a moment. FIrst I want to illustrate how they, and other Jesus mythologists ten dto go about comparing paganism and Christianity. I will quote "Bede's guide to the Production of a Best-seller that Undermines the Roots of Christianity." It is a tongue in cheek criticism of most Pagan christianity comparisons. With this you will be able to find all the parallels you could possible want between Paganism and Christianity.

" 1. The first thing to do is to ensure you cast youe net as widely as possible. SO within Christianity you should include every cult, heresy, and sect you can get your hands on. Gnosticism will be particularly helpful as they did indeed borrow large chunks of pagan thought which is partly why they were considered heretics in the first place. As for paganism, this can include just about everything. Freke and Gandy comb not only Greek cults 9oedipus) but also Egyptian 9Horus and Osiris), Roman (Bacchus) and Persian (Mithras). Elsewhere you will find Celtic deities, Norse berserkers and Indian Mystics pulled into the fray. Now with this vast body of writing, finding parallels will not be too challenging provided you are willing to wade through it all.
2. But don't restrict yourself to pagan religions from before the time of Christ, remember your methodology should be that Christianity copied pagans and not the other way around. This is useful because you can now point to similariites between paganism and Christianity after the latter was already widespread. So, if like Freke and Gandy, you can find a picture showing Bacchus on a cross dating from two hundred years after Jesus was crucified you can still claim that the Christians copied the pagans and not the other way around.
3. Language is important. Christian terms such as 'salvation, Eucharist', 'word made flesh' and 'lamb of god' are common currency today. Therefore when translating or paraphraising pagan sources always use modern Christian language. Never mind that the ancient pagans would not have known what you were on about- you are not talking to them. In this way you can call a woman being raped by various kinds of wildlife a 'virgin birth' you can call having ones body parts stuck back together a 'resurrection' and you can call just about every Greek hero a 'son of god'. Also it is helpful to use King James Bible phrases and style when quoting pagan texts. It gives them more gravitas.
4. Do try to confuse liturgy and practice with history. For instance the mystery religions and Christianity were both underground movements so they had to operate in similar sorts of ways. Sacred meals and ritual washing are as old as religion itself so the Christianity using them as well as pagans is not surprising at all. Make it sound like a complete revelation.

 

[scottcatchot]

quote continued:

"5. Say totally different things are in fact closely related. FOr instance, Mithras was sometimes represented by a bull. Say this is the same as jesus being called the lamb of God. (ignoring that one is a symbol of sexuality and strength and the other of innocence and humility). Compare the Mithric ritual of taking a shower in the wrrm blood of the aforementioned bull with CHristian baptism in water. Claim that the thieves crucified with jesus are the same as a apir of torch bearers that appear on some illustrations of Bacchus.
6. For goodness sake do not mention the things that make the pagan mysteries interesting. After all your work of showing Jesus and Bacchus are one and the same, you will lose everything if you let on that Bacchus was the god of drunkeness and his worship involved getting plastered and having sex with anything in sight (goats being a particular favorite) In fact, keep sex out of it altogether. Yes, Sex was the central feature of an awful lot of these pagan rituals but that is not the point you are trying to make.
7. Avoid using up to date scholarship which will probably pur cold water over your vaunted theories. You will find plenty of nineteenth and early twentieth century writers with a bone to pick that can support your wildest speculations. ANd do not worry if not everyone agrees with you-you can dismiss the dissenters as apologists or those unable to cope with your earth shattering ideas.

Using this guide should be able to produce as many parallels as you require to convince even the most blinkered of readers. AS you can probably tell from the above I am not impressed by the pagan myth hypothesis. It is interesting to note that despite his vast amount of reading, hostility to orthodox Christianity and willingness to allege that most of the New testament is fictional, not even John Dominic Crossan has any time for the idea that Jesus was made up of pagan motifs. Nor indeed do the vast majority of liberal scholars.-the pagan hypothesis is firmly outside the pale of scholarship and with good reason."


The above was a long quote, but I really like the tongue in cheek way it points out the faulty comparison and broad strokes that proponents of the Jesus Myth go to inorder to show similarities between paganism and Christianity.

Problems I have with Gandy and freke really invove the fact that many of the claims regarding similarities between Jesus and Pagan figures is only justified by references to books that are nearly a hundred years out of date, and I don't mena ancient texts. J.P. Hoding has demonstrated how modern Mithras studies have moved on a good deal. James Haanam states " For a start .very many of the books referred to in the notes are extremly old and very hard to get hold of for anyone without a first class library at hand. I took my copy of the jesus Mysteries with me when i went to a summer school at the University of Wales thinking that there at least I would be able to find the books the authors refer to. Not a bit of it. Unperturbed, I tried the unfeasibly large University of London Library where I met with a shade more success but still found few of the older authorities on Mithras....In the few cases where I could check their sources something rather surprising same up. Freke and Gandy are so selective and vague with there references that I could find a statement that totally contradicts their central thesis on the very page that they pointed to."
There are many examples of that show in the case of Freke and Gandy we are not dealing with a pair of objective scholars. But even putting that aside, the whole Jesus Myth Hypothesis is not good science and that is why the majority od scholars blow it off. It is mainly on the internet that you even still hear about it. J. P. Holding explains why it is faulty " To put it succinctly, the rule of parismony, or simplest theory, applies here. It is used explicitly as criterion for deciding between rival hypothesis of equal explanatory power, and the simplest theory wins. (or, as one reader put it:"Not only does Hypothesis A have more items that beg experimental support than Hypothesis B has, some of them are bigger begars than those in hypothesis B.' Occam's Razor is a logical fallacy and one that a scientist [like a physicist] ought to not use to eliminate theories;but historians may be able to use it in a form like this.) Even if we do grant the wildly outrageous view that the Jesus Myth has equal explanatory power, it would be rejected by the law of parsimony. But, since it fails to explain the vast majority of the details-passion of the few, triumph in closed locales, resistance to modification by subsequent cultures, uniformity in variegated sources, etc.-It never even makes it this far. Parsimony, we say in summary, is closely related to plausibility, and the most parsimonious and plausible explanationfor the origin of Christianity in this regard is that Jesus actually existed."

 

[scottcatchot]

on contradictions, number one lets define what a contradiction is. For something to be a true contradiction then the two can not be true at the same time. Example a person can not be both alive and dead at the same time. A person is alive, or he is dead. Now many people point out contradictions in the Bible based on things like well this gospel said that peter went with him nad the other gospel siad peter and jame s went with him, which is it. Well these gospels are eyewitness accounts and witnesses focus on different aspects so sometimes details listed in one may be left out in another. this does not mean it is a contradiction unless both cannot be true at the same time. In the example saying Peter went does not say that no one else went. If it said Only Peter accompanied then it would be a contradiction.

Back to freke and Gandy:
"the most startling contradiction is between the geneologies presented in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke."

In regards to the two Geneologies there are three areas of concern:
1. Matthew supposedly erred by leaving some names out. Here are the omissions: Mt1:8 skips from Joram (=Jehoram) to Uzziah (=Azariah), but 1 Chronicles 3:11-12 adds the names Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah.

The fact that Uzziah was another name for Azariah is shown by 2 Chronicles 26, where Uzziah is also reported as the son of Amaziah and father of Jotham.

Mt 1:11 skips from Josiah to Jeconiah (-Jehoiachin), but 2 Kings 23:24 and 2 Kings 24:6 show that Jehoiakim (name changed from Eliakim) was son of Josiah and father of Jeconiah. But MAtthew intentionally left a few names out, so it is not a mistake. It is alos common in Scripture to use 'son' to refer to 'descendant', so Matthew was using perfectly acceptable language conventions of his day. In fact, the first verse in Matthew say s" .. Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham," which is another clue that Matthew was deliberately not presenting an exhaustive genealogy. Mt 1:17 makes it clear that he is selecting 3 groups of 14, Maybe because the Hebrew letters in the name David add up to 14, or because 14 =2x7 (the number 7 often symbolizes completion, fulfilment or perfection in the bible.) I do not know the exact reason he chose 14.

Other claims that the genealogies of Matthew and Luke contradict is because they supposedly give different fathers for Joseph, the Husband of Mary. However, Luke is tracing Mary's line, showing that she was also a descendant of David, as implied in Luke 1:32. Matthew traced the Legal line from Joseph to David, but this line was cursed because of Jeconiah (Jer. 22:17-30). This curse means that if Joseph had been jesus's biological father, then Jesus would not have been eligible to sit on King David's throne. Here are some reasons that show Luke as giving Mary's line:Luke's nativity narrative mainly presents Mary's perspective, while Matthew presented Josephs perspective. SO readers of the original Greek would realize that the writers intended to present Mary's and Joseph's lines repectively. The reason Luke did not mention Mary explicitly is that rules for listing Jewish ancestry generally left out the mothers names. A clear pointer to the fact that the geneology in Luke is Mary's line is that the Greek text has a definate article before all the names except Joseph's. Any Greek speaker would have understood that Heli must have been the father of Joseph's wife, because the lack of an article would mean that he would insert Joseph into the parenthesis( as was supposed) in Luke 3:23. So he would have read it not as 'Jesus..being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, the son of Heli' but as 'Jesus...being son (as was supposed of Joseph) of Heli' ( Note the original Greek had no punctuation or even spaces between words). Indeed, the Jewish talmud, which is no friend to Christianity, dating from the first centuries A.D. calls Mary the 'daughter of Heli'.

 

[heretic888]

There are a couple of things I take issue with here.

.... I disagree with you in regards to the Jesus Myth, as does the majority of scholars. The theory that Jesus never existed has been around for a long, long, time but has never become an accepted theory. This is because it is based on a bad hypothesis.

This is fallacious reasoning, based on an appeal to anonymous authority. The "experts agree that x" is not a valid argument when particular lines of reasoning and evidence are not engaged in inquiry, as is being done in this case.

In essence, you are juxtaposing the opinions of unknown "authorities" in place of an actual logical argument for your position.

These same ideas have been recently resufaced by The Jesus Mysteries by Peter Gandy and Timothy Freke. Most of their ideas involve Gnosticism more than CHristianity. You apparently like their book from the many quotes you use from them.

Not really. Freke and Gandy's book makes some good points here and there, but it exhibits questionable scholarship and its content is obviously polemical in nature.

I much prefer Earl Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle or Robert Price's Deconstructing Jesus or even George Wells' Did Jesus Exist?, to be perfectly honest. Ray Jaskin also recently published a book entitled The Evolution of Christ and Christianities which is quite good.

The first thing to do is to ensure you cast youe net as widely as possible. SO within Christianity you should include every cult, heresy, and sect you can get your hands on. Gnosticism will be particularly helpful as they did indeed borrow large chunks of pagan thought which is partly why they were considered heretics in the first place.

Bede here is asking for us to give privileged status to orthodox Christianity, a logical fallacy known as special pleading. So-called "gnostic" or "heretical" Christianity was extremely commonplace in the early history of the faith. Marcion and Valentinus were active around the same time as Justin Martyr, for example, around 140 CE.

It does not logically follow that because certain variants of Christianity were later considered "heretical" that they are irrelevant to the early history of the faith.

Freke and Gandy comb not only Greek cults 9oedipus) but also Egyptian 9Horus and Osiris), Roman (Bacchus) and Persian (Mithras).

All of the mystery school deities are derived from the Egyptian figure of Osiris and his son Horus. It was widely accepted at the time that varying deities were adaptations or elaborations on the same archetype, thus the universal appealtion of Osiris-Dionysus or pantheos ('all-god').

Elsewhere you will find Celtic deities, Norse berserkers and Indian Mystics pulled into the fray.

Freke and Gandy never mention anything like this in their work. I am going to call a bold-faced lie on this one.

Now with this vast body of writing, finding parallels will not be too challenging provided you are willing to wade through it all.

Actually, the majority of parallels can be found in Euripides' The Bacchae alone. Furthermore, Freke and Gandy exhibit two different vases dating to the sixth to fourth centuries BCE which feature a Dionysus with many of the elements of the crucified Jesus, including:

1) The appearance of a young, bearded man.

2) A crown of thorns or ivy on his head.

3) Donning white or purple robes of some kind.

3) Being strapped against a tree or wooden post.

4) With two attendants preparing a pitcher of wine and a bowl of bread loves before the godman.

But don't restrict yourself to pagan religions from before the time of Christ, remember your methodology should be that Christianity copied pagans and not the other way around. This is useful because you can now point to similariites between paganism and Christianity after the latter was already widespread. So, if like Freke and Gandy, you can find a picture showing Bacchus on a cross dating from two hundred years after Jesus was crucified you can still claim that the Christians copied the pagans and not the other way around.

This is a valid point, but it is still a case of special pleading in that it uncritically assumes paganism borrowed from Christianity. There is no compelling evidence in either direction in this specific case.

Language is important. Christian terms such as 'salvation, Eucharist', 'word made flesh' and 'lamb of god' are common currency today. Therefore when translating or paraphraising pagan sources always use modern Christian language. Never mind that the ancient pagans would not have known what you were on about- you are not talking to them. In this way you can call a woman being raped by various kinds of wildlife a 'virgin birth' you can call having ones body parts stuck back together a 'resurrection' and you can call just about every Greek hero a 'son of god'. Also it is helpful to use King James Bible phrases and style when quoting pagan texts. It gives them more gravitas....


Do try to confuse liturgy and practice with history. For instance the mystery religions and Christianity were both underground movements so they had to operate in similar sorts of ways. Sacred meals and ritual washing are as old as religion itself so the Christianity using them as well as pagans is not surprising at all. Make it sound like a complete revelation.

As hard as Bede tries here, the testimony of both Pagan critics (Celsus, 170 CE) and Christian apologists (Justin Martyr, 140 CE, and Tertullian, 190 CE) from the mid-2nd century betrays him. That these parallels existed was taken as fact by both Pagans and Christians during the 2nd century, they just explained them in different ways.

Avoid using up to date scholarship which will probably pur cold water over your vaunted theories. You will find plenty of nineteenth and early twentieth century writers with a bone to pick that can support your wildest speculations. ANd do not worry if not everyone agrees with you-you can dismiss the dissenters as apologists or those unable to cope with your earth shattering ideas.

These are valid points, as I indicated above.

Using this guide should be able to produce as many parallels as you require to convince even the most blinkered of readers. AS you can probably tell from the above I am not impressed by the pagan myth hypothesis. It is interesting to note that despite his vast amount of reading, hostility to orthodox Christianity and willingness to allege that most of the New testament is fictional, not even John Dominic Crossan has any time for the idea that Jesus was made up of pagan motifs. Nor indeed do the vast majority of liberal scholars.-the pagan hypothesis is firmly outside the pale of scholarship and with good reason.

Another appeal to authority without referencing the arguments of the "authorities" in question. Oh well, at least he mentioned one of them (Crossan) by name this time.

The above was a long quote, but I really like the tongue in cheek way it points out the faulty comparison and broad strokes that proponents of the Jesus Myth go to inorder to show similarities between paganism and Christianity.

Personally, I think the comparative religion approach of Freke, Gandy, and similar minds, while interesting, is somewhat irrelevant. One needn't create a lengthy list detailing the specific similarities between the Gospel Jesus and Dionysus to observe that Christianity was essentially a Jewish adaptation of the Pagan mysteries.

The ritual participation in the death and resurrection of the godman, including becoming "one" with him in a ritual meal of symbolic cannibalism, is really all you need to establish the "Jesus Mysteries Thesis". Paul's letters are enough to do that, you don't need to draw upon some arcane parallels between the details of Adonis' sacrifice and Jesus' crucifixion to see that the same basic pattern is there.

Problems I have with Gandy and freke really invove the fact that many of the claims regarding similarities between Jesus and Pagan figures is only justified by references to books that are nearly a hundred years out of date, and I don't mena ancient texts.

Agreed. See my comments above.

There are many examples of that show in the case of Freke and Gandy we are not dealing with a pair of objective scholars. But even putting that aside, the whole Jesus Myth Hypothesis is not good science and that is why the majority od scholars blow it off.

Another appeal to anonymous authorities, taking the opinions of unknown "authorities" as a matter of fact without discussing their arguments.

It is mainly on the internet that you even still hear about it.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to call you on this one. The works of George Wells, Earl Doherty, Jay Raskin, Robert Price, Hermann Detering, and the entire Dutch Radical School as a whole are testament against this claim.

Not that I agree with all the arguments of every one of these scholars, mind you, but the claim that the mythicist position only exists on the internet is nothing short of a misconception.

"Even if we do grant the wildly outrageous view that the Jesus Myth has equal explanatory power, it would be rejected by the law of parsimony. But, since it fails to explain the vast majority of the details-passion of the few, triumph in closed locales, resistance to modification by subsequent cultures, uniformity in variegated sources, etc.-It never even makes it this far. Parsimony, we say in summary, is closely related to plausibility, and the most parsimonious and plausible explanationfor the origin of Christianity in this regard is that Jesus actually existed."

This sounds nice, of course, but it falls apart when subjected to actual scrutiny.

One of the more glaring claims, for example, is that Christianity is "uniform in variegated sources", which is nothing short of a bold-faced lie. This is something only an apologist could say, as it is not accepted at all in critical New Testament scholarship. What research has consistently demonstrated is the radical pluralism and diversity of the Christian groups in the first few centuries CE, not their uniformity.

One could be referring to the supposed uniformity among the Gospel narratives, I suppose, but this pretty much ignores the well-attested paradigm of Markan Priority (i.e., the other three gospel authors basically copied the Gospel of Mark, adding or deleting as they saw fit).

Furthermore, it is actually the mythicist position that is the more parsimonious of the two, in that it more smoothly explains the available data --- such as how "Jesus Christ" is treated in the Pauline letters and the complete lack of biographical data about "Jesus Christ" by an apologist until the time of Justin Martyr, as well as the abscence of independent corroboration of "Jesus of Nazareth" until the beginning of the second century, and even the widespread practice of docetist Christian groups --- while the historicist is often left stuttering and exaggerating.

Sorry, but no dice.

Laterz.

 

[heretic888]

To continue....

on contradictions, number one lets define what a contradiction is. For something to be a true contradiction then the two can not be true at the same time. Example a person can not be both alive and dead at the same time. A person is alive, or he is dead. Now many people point out contradictions in the Bible based on things like well this gospel said that peter went with him nad the other gospel siad peter and jame s went with him, which is it. Well these gospels are eyewitness accounts and witnesses focus on different aspects so sometimes details listed in one may be left out in another. this does not mean it is a contradiction unless both cannot be true at the same time. In the example saying Peter went does not say that no one else went. If it said Only Peter accompanied then it would be a contradiction.

Unfortunately, your analysis betrays a certain uncritical reading of the texts in question.

The contradictions are aplenty, my friend. I already cited, for example, how Jesus could not have been born at the time of the Quirinus census and during the reign of King Herod. The former took place in 6 CE, while the latter died in 4 BCE. It is just physically impossible. Period.

Then, of course, there are the issues of Mark's apparent ignorance of Palestinian geography, which I have already cited in detail and which you seem to have subsequently ignored. This completely debunks the notion that the text is either factually accurate or the product of an "eyewitness".

The dominant paradigm in New Testament scholarship to date is that of Markan Priority. It has been demonstrated, by critical examination of the individual pericopes that make up the Gospel of Mark, that the Gospels of Luke and Matthew (and possibly the Gospel of John, although this is in dispute), are dependent upon the Gospel of Mark. So much so that they actually copy Mark verbatim in some areas (while adding or deleting his text in other areas). Ergo, whatever they may be, Matthew and Luke cannot be said to be "eyewitness" accounts, since they are essentially copying from another source.

Furthermore, Mark itself cannot be said to be independent, for it has been demonstrated to be constructed of pre-existing sources and materials. For an excellent scholarly presentation of such data, I would suggest Michael Turton's work on the subject.

Lastly, orthodox scholarship as a whole tends to date Mark, the earliest of the gospels, to being authored sometime between 65 CE and 75 CE, after the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (due to internal markers that allude to the event). Unless the author were a child when Jesus was purportedly crucified, then it is highly improbable that we are dealing with an "eyewitness" here.

In summation, not only is Mark (the oldest and most primary of the canonical Gospels) not an eyewitness account, but it is also clearly contradictory and internally inconsistent. One is also reminded of the arguments of James Robertson, which have in a sense been revived by Jay Raskin's reconstruction of Mark, in which it is largely evident that the canonical Gospels were originally intended as scripts for plays (most likely to initiates or beginners in the faith), not as bibliographies.

In regards to the two Geneologies there are three areas of concern:
1. Matthew supposedly erred by leaving some names out. Here are the omissions: Mt1:8 skips from Joram (=Jehoram) to Uzziah (=Azariah), but 1 Chronicles 3:11-12 adds the names Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah.

The fact that Uzziah was another name for Azariah is shown by 2 Chronicles 26, where Uzziah is also reported as the son of Amaziah and father of Jotham.

Mt 1:11 skips from Josiah to Jeconiah (-Jehoiachin), but 2 Kings 23:24 and 2 Kings 24:6 show that Jehoiakim (name changed from Eliakim) was son of Josiah and father of Jeconiah. But MAtthew intentionally left a few names out, so it is not a mistake. It is alos common in Scripture to use 'son' to refer to 'descendant', so Matthew was using perfectly acceptable language conventions of his day. In fact, the first verse in Matthew say s" .. Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham," which is another clue that Matthew was deliberately not presenting an exhaustive genealogy. Mt 1:17 makes it clear that he is selecting 3 groups of 14, Maybe because the Hebrew letters in the name David add up to 14, or because 14 =2x7 (the number 7 often symbolizes completion, fulfilment or perfection in the bible.) I do not know the exact reason he chose 14.

All that is nice, until you take into account that both Matthew and Luke seem to disagree about who Joseph's own father is.

Other claims that the genealogies of Matthew and Luke contradict is because they supposedly give different fathers for Joseph, the Husband of Mary. However, Luke is tracing Mary's line, showing that she was also a descendant of David, as implied in Luke 1:32.

You can claim this all you wish, but it is not justified in the text itself. This is an ex post facto rationalization.

Laterz.

 

[heretic888]

Recently, on the JesusMysteries discussion group (not to be confused with Freke and Gandy's book of the same name), Rod Green has written a series of posts that clarify my own position on this subject quite well:

"The 'myth' of a god-man who was crucified is 'exactly' what Paul was preaching in his epistles. Those who see a historical man in Paul's letters are reading the later gospels 'backward' into Paul. Paul represents that earliest layer without a historical Jesus. The gospels represent later layers. The best web source is Earl Doherty's excellent site: http://home.ca.inter.net/oblio/home.htm

That site alone could take days to assimilate, but of course, I will be happy to discuss it with you as well.

A rough sketch of this position is that Paul does not speak of a historical Jesus, and his language is the language of the Mystics and the Mysteries. The theory goes beyond inference to investigating why Paul did not appear to know any of the major events in the Jesus story-board, right down to the miracles, sayings, and parables; and why Paul remained silent when the topics at hand often almost screamed for him to reference the flesh and blood Jesus and his teachings. It also address the inevitable anomalies in any theory, which in this case are the relatively few ambiguous passages in Paul (born of a woman, born under the law, in the 'likeness' of flesh) and demostrates that these were not references to a recently incarnate Jesus who had appeared in person in Palestine."

Secondly:

"Don't confuse the Christians who faced persecution in later decades with the earliest layers of the followers of the cultic myth. The original myth included crucifixion, but did not take place on earth and no Romans were involved. The second layer occurred around the time of Mark, and the story has been allegorized on earth, and naturally the Romans have to be involved as they were the primary proponents and practitioners of Crucufixion. This was still no problem as the stories were only allegories. The third layer is found at the boundary where some began to believe that the allegories might have been real history. Now the Romans become real people enforcing a real execution. This is a problem. Yet the people who came to believe this story were not the originators of the story-board. It was already fixed by the earlier mythical and allegorical layers. All that these new historicists could do was to put the best face on an uncomfortable situation. Certainly by Luke/Acts and John, this marginalizing of Roman involvement was complete, yet it could not be completely sanitized."

Thirdly:

"The Epistles of Paul are the edge of the abyss. There are no earlier records extant, perhaps there never were. The Mysteries, as you know, did not leave textual relics. It was not part of their protocols. That is not an excuse, it is recognition of historical fact. Secrecy was part of the Mystery formula. We actually know far more about the practices of the Christ Cult in the first century than we do about those of Mithras, Dionysis, or Bacchus. It is still an anemic record.

Any attempt to explain the earlier origins of Paul's mythical Christ will necessarily require speculation, albeit somewhat informed. We can use Paul's own expressions as well as his thoughts regarding those who went before him to develop intelligent inferences about the most recent layer, but those inferences must remain at a high level for lack of probative material.

I personally do not think I can suggest what the 'original myth' looked like or its date of origin (the main reason I search here regularly). I believe Freke and Gandy were close to the truth in their theory that the Christ Cult was a form of Mystery adapted to the Jewish milieu. Thus it was not really invented, it was immigrated into Palestine, and so its roots going backward are continuous for centuries into the darkness. When did the leap into Palestine occur? It is tempting to suggest in the early first century, but I do not think that the cult that Paul joined was new. It already had established itself a fledgling liturgy and a number of origin hymns, as reflected in Paul's epistles, so I 'speculate' it went back into the first century BCE, or even earlier. We know every little about how these cults migrated from one culture to the next, or how long it took for them to take roots.

As an example, there is evidence that the Mystery of Dionysis was first established in Greece by Pythagoras as early as the 6th century BCE. Dionysis had long since been a Greek god, having been worshiped by pre-Greek barbarian tribes, yet by the 6th century BCE, the worship of Dionysis began to acquire some of the traits of a mystery. However it would be 2-3 more centuries before it would take its place firmly as one of the 'life, death, rebirth dieties'. I have no problem speculating that the cult's earliest Judean roots may be second century BCE or even earlier. It may have informed many of the marginal Jewish groups that are still mysteries to us, including some of the sectarian texts of the DSS.

Regardless, it does not make its appearence in text until Paul.

My answer to why the motif od a dying/rising god-man was worshiped is the same as for all the Mysteries, and all the dying, rising god-man myths throughout the world. It apparently has universal appeal and answers a deep emotional/psychological/spiritual need in most humans.

This explanation will probably be unsatisfying to you, and I think I understand. Yet I have no need for an 'Intelligent Design' explanation, that someone somewhere 'invented' the cult. I don't believe the evidence takes us to that explanation. Every religion of which I am aware today has neither a definitive origin date nor a creator. Similarly, I don't believe anyone created this vast cosmos or the people on this tiny planet. Stuff just happens. ;>)"

Fourthly:

"Jesus was the same god-man as Dionysis, Osiris, Bacchus, Attis, etc. They all origninated from the same core myth. The god-man myth moved from one culture to the next by co-opting a minor diety from the target culture, such as those noted above. The target diety then was assigned a mythical layer consistent with the core god-man myth. This is why all the Mysteries are so similar, yet retain a certain cultural distinction. There is hardly a culture around the Mediterranean that did not assimilate some form of this myth (except in some minds, the Jews) Judea presented a hurdle for the migration of this universal myth. There was no minor diety to co-opt. The solution was to find a lesser but important god-connected personage, in this case three, the Messiah, the figure of Wisdom, and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, and blend them into a new god-man diety, Jesus Christ.

This would have been at the earliest layer. If it did not happen this way, then the Jews stand alone as virtually the only culture around the Mediterranean that refused its assimilation. I believe they adopted it. Two unique cultural distinctions of the Jews was to color the Jewish god-man myth. First, the Jews viewed their religion and interactions with God via a historical prism. Second, The Jews were largely monotheistic by the first century.

This directed their own version of the universal god-man myth to eventual historicization, and it also informed the exclusive 'us vs. them' nature of Christianity."

And lastly:

"By god-man, we are talking about a half god half man usually sired by a god with a mortal woman (a virgin of course!). Yes, all of the Mysteries involved a god-man. All of the god-men were presented as allegories, quite often a dramtic play. None of them were assumed to be historically true and they often took place in a higher sphere of the cosmos, but sometimes on earth. The location did not seem to be a particular interest within the allegories. The point was to achieve a mystical union with the god-man via a recreation of his suffering, death, and resurrection. The motifs varied widely by culture, but that is the essence of it. The other critical aspect is that all of the Mysteries were based upon secret knowledge only available to the initiates. BTW, there does seem to be a direct and continuous trail from each of the Mysteries back to the cult of Osiris in Egypt. It is a long journey chronologically, but it exists. This does not infer that Christianity was descended directly from Egyptian myths. It more probably is closer to Graeco-Roman versions that had already been around for years."

Laterz.

 

[scottcatchot]

Alot to check out, I want to check out the links you listed and I do agree with you on the appeal to authorities and not giving names, I apologize and will correct the matter. It may take me some time to read everything but I will do so and post again. Though we will probably never agree with each other on everything, but who knows, I am enjoying the discussion.

 

[heretic888]

Alot to check out, I want to check out the links you listed and I do agree with you on the appeal to authorities and not giving names, I apologize and will correct the matter. It may take me some time to read everything but I will do so and post again. Though we will probably never agree with each other on everything, but who knows, I am enjoying the discussion.

Likewise.

I should clarify, however, that the arguments I am advancing do not necessarily preclude the existence of a Historical Jesus who, for whatever reasons, was grafted onto the Jewish Mystery School developing among early Christian communities (such as Paul's). It is entirely possible that there was a Historical Jesus.

My issue is simply that there seems to be no need for a Historical Jesus. The Argument From Silence, Markan Priority, and the Comparative Religion approach all seem to attest to the general features that I have outlined above. Ergo, from my perspective, it is the more parsimonious argument (Occam's Razor) to not invoke a historical "founder" of the Christ Cult(s) --- seeing it as an evolving tradition within Hellenistic Judaism.

Laterz.