To Half Banana
Towerwatchman, thank you for a long reply. The natural reaction of Christians is to defend to the hilt the position of Jesus as redeemer because if this hope was flawed it would destroy the very thing which gives meaning and value to their lives.
That is not unique to Christians, any worldview be it Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu etc. is defended with equal veracity. The interesting thing is when you compare all the world religions by their originator, Buddhism by Buddha, Muslim by Muhammad, ect. Jesus stands unique among all of them.
WHY JESUS
Paul is the product of three cultures.
•Hebrew: who gave us our moral categories;
• Greek: who have given us our philosophical categories;
• Roman: have passed on to us our legal categories
• The pursuit of the Hebrews was idealized and symbolized by light. 'The Lord is my light and my salvation.' 'The people that sat in darkness have seen a great light.' 'This is the light that lighteth every man that comes into the world.’
•The pursuit of the Greeks was symbolized by knowledge. That’s why the Biblical writers say, 'These things are written that you might know that you have eternal life. [1 Jn 5:13]
•The pursuit of the Romans was symbolized by glory. ‘The glory of Rome.’
Writing to the believers in Corinth that embodied all these influences, the apostle Paul wrote, "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." (2 Cor 4:6]
This verse captures every longing and ideal! In the face of Jesus Christ, God's holiness transcended Hebrew morality, God's omniscience transcended Greece's quest for knowing, and God's sovereignty transcended any Roman glory. All were ultimately shown to us in a face.” [Ravi Zacharias]
Origin
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John’s “In the beginning” has a striking parallel with Genesis, “In the beginning God.” Jesus had no beginning. If you were to draw a line with a razor’s edge that separated the eternal and the spiritual from the beginning of the temporal and the physical, this is what John is opening to. This is what John refers to as the beginning. Using “was” = “eimi” John is saying that at the commencement of “the beginning” the Word already existed. Question, if the Word already existed before the beginning, where would He have been, if not the eternal?
Therefore
• Premise one: Before the beginning the Word existed.
• Premise two: The Word existed in the eternal with God. {God does not exist in the eternal, the eternal exist because of God.}
• Conclusion: The Logos is God.
o No other claimant to divine or prophetic status ever answered the question of his home in this manner.
o All others who have claimed or been given prophetic status are human beings on whom their specific call came from their deity.
• Jesus’ vision of reality, His explanations of life, His opening up of mysteries, and His glimpses into what matters and what does not matter proceed out of His being in the eternal.
• His birth on earth was not an origination, but a visitation.
• When Jesus spoke it was not the introduction of a religion, but an introduction to truth about reality as God alone knows it.
o Muslim scholars attempt to attribute to Mohammed a momentary excursion into heaven. Islam claims that at one point in Mohammed’s life, on one particular night, he was transported to heaven to be given a glimpse of what heaven is like. If taken at face value, heaven was foreign to Mohammed.
Virgin Birth.
• The virgin birth at the very least points to a world unbound by sheer naturalism.
• The Koran written six hundred years after Jesus, affirmed His virgin birth. [Surah 19,19-21]. His birth was not by natural means.
• This cannot be said of Mohammed, Krishna, or Buddha.
Jesus’ life has been regarded the purest that has ever been lived.
• Islam: I am only a messenger of your Lord, to announce to you a faultless son (Surah 19:19).
• Mohammed’s, Buddha’s, and Krishna’s struggles are recorded within their own scriptures.
• Mohammed asked for forgiveness of his sins. [Surah 47,48]
• Koran promises a heaven that includes “wine and women.’
o Jesus was never driven by sensuality or asked for forgiveness or sins.
• The playfulness of Krishna and his exploits with the milkmaids in the Bhagavad-Gita is an embarrassment to many Hindu scholars.
• The very fact that Buddha endured rebirths implies a series of imperfect lives.
• Buddha left his home, turning his back on his wife and son, it was in search of an answer.
• Buddha did not start with the answers, He attained his “enlightenment”.
• Buddha did not start out pure but journeyed on a ‘path’ to purity.
Jesus’s claim was that heaven was His dwelling and earth was His footstool. There never was a time when He was not. There never will be a time when He will not be. His was a position of truth from an eternal perspective.
Please note, (and you still prevaricate by giving special meanings to certain words) the idea of cheating death is a fundamental driver of religious belief and yet; no one has credibly benefitted from Jesus’ supposed life and sacrificial death. Apart that is from the false security in grasping the illusory straw, in hoping for eternal life.
How can we verify that what Jesus said about the afterlife is true? By the resurrection.
We have numerous lines of historical evidence, proof that the tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of His women followers.
We have several lines of historical evidence established that on numerous occasions and at different places various individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive from the dead.
At the very origin of the Christian faith is the belief of the earliest disciples that God had raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.
Jesus of Nazareth was crucified in Jerusalem by Roman authority during the Passover feast, have been arrested and convicted on charges of blasphemy by the Jewish Sanhedrin and then had been slandered before the governor-on charges of treason. He died within several hours and was buried Friday afternoon by Josephus of Arimethia, which was shut with the stone. Certain female followers of Jesus, including Mary Magdalene, had observed His interment, visited the tomb early on Sunday morning, only to find it empty. Thereafter, Jesus appeared from the dead to the disciples,, including Peter, who then became proclaimers of the message of His resurrection. Also appeared to His brothers James and Jude, and to Saul. All four Gospels testify to these facts. Many more details can be supplied by adding facts that are attested by three out of four. So minor discrepancy should not affect our case.
Explaining the evidence.
We come, then, to the second step of our case determining which explanation of the evidence is the best. Historians weigh various factors in assessing competing hypothesis. Some of the most important are as follows.
1. The best explanation will have greater explanatory scope than other explanations.
That is, it will explain more of the evidence.
2. The best explanation will have greater explanatory power than other explanations.
That is to make the evidence more probable.
3. The best explanation will be more plausible than other explanations.
That is it will fit better with true background beliefs.
4. The best explanation will be less contrived than other explanations.
That is, it won't require adopting as many new beliefs that have no independent evidence.
5. The best explanation will be dis confirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than explanations.
That is, it won't conflict with as many accepted beliefs.
6. The best explanation will meet conditions 1-5 so much better than the others that there is little chance that one of the other explanations, after further investigation, will be better in meeting these conditions.
The Gospel accounts meet all these conditions the best.
I was in the Ryland Library in Manchester last year and enjoyed looking at the fragment of John, one of the earliest pieces of NT text dated around the third quarter of the second century, a tiny scrap of papyrus with a few lines of smudgy Greek but important nevertheless. This is representative of the reality of the early NT texts not the thousands of documents you infer.
The number of documents from antiquity is correct, it is not a fabrication.
The bigger mistake is to believe they are divine.
Never believed they were.
It is hardly surprising that manuscripts which were authorised and funded by Imperial Rome became common and the evidence is that it is after the fourth century that their number proliferates. However the most widely distributed Christian literature of the first two centuries was “The Sherperd of Hermas”, which is ‘scripture’ by Paul’s definition and never uses the name Jesus but just calls the saviour figure “Lord”.
If the NT was lost it could have been re written by the thousands of quotes from the early church fathers. These quotes were recorded prior to Christianity becoming the official religion of Rome. As to the Gnostic writings that were excluded from the cannon I suggest you read them and judge for yourself if it a first century document or later forgery. Many people champion for these ‘gospels’ without reading them. You will note the sensationalism that comes from latter writings, how certain characters now become hero’s in the story, contrary to scripture. But people still champion what they do not know. For example the Gospel of Thomas which was claimed to be a first century document by leading scholars. Note the interesting detail that was found later on.
An ancient way of memorizing was to have catch words in the document, the catch word in vs one is in vs two, the catch word in vs two is in vs three and so forth; this was practiced by Jew and Gentile alike. The Gospel of Thomas was found written in Coptic. The most interesting evidence is if you read Thomas in Greek or Coptic, it looks like the 114 sayings aren’t in any particular order. It appears just to be just a random collection of what Jesus supposedly said. But if you translate it into Syriac, something extremely intriguing emerges. Suddenly you discover more than five hundred Syrian catchwords that link virtually all the 114 sayings in order to help people memorize the gospel. Syriac was not the common language in the area at that time, it was Greek, and if locally Aramaic. One has to ask, why would Thomas who was a first century Jew living in a culture influenced by Greek civilization and ruled by Roman law write a document in Syriac? Because he never did, it is a Gnostic document forged with his name.
You miss the significance of the resemblance of Christianity to Mithraism. Of course they are different, otherwise we would call Christianity Mithraism! However, Jesus Christianity palpably did derive many things from the secret cult of Mithras but by no means exclusively. Noteworthy is the borrowed eschatology, atonement by much of the Apocalypse and outstandingly the last supper, the memorial of Mithra which the Romans had been celebrating once each year with small cakes for centuries before Jesus was thought of. The home of Roman Mithraism was on the Vatican stone promontory on the very spot where St Peters stands today. Yes the Roman Catholic Church was built on the Rock of Peter; Mithraism. The last Mithraic Pope,(PAter PAtris or Papa) Vettius Agorius Praetextatus died in 384 CE well after the death of Constantine and hence the Mithraic Papal role was tolerated by him. The cult of Mithras had a celibate clergy, they worshipped on the holy day of Sunday since all pagan saviours including Jesus, are sons of Sun Gods born to die “on the cross” i.e at the spring equinox, and thence to heaven.
At the most superficial coincidence. Neither you nor I are experts on the subject. I quoted several leading scholars in the field who disagree with you and your source. Now if you have a leading scholar who agrees with you please present, otherwise this subject has been proven false.
But as you rightly said Christianity did not come from the Good Sheperd Mithra, he was only a part of the story. The Catholic faith was the result of politically motivated synchretism, absorbing all the major Jesus cults including the Pauline, the Johannine community as well as the cults of Attis, Dionysus, Serapis, Cybele etc.
Do you have any support by any leading scholars in these fields to back up such claims? This is nothing new, the ideas have been around for centuries. Follow history any you will notice that Christianity is an off shoot of Judaism, and not a hybrid of various secret cults.
