by hamilcarr 32 Replies latest jw friends
Why are some of the pivotal events of Jesus' life as recorded in the Gospels shamelessly borrowed from pagan predecessors? The following list is not supposed to be exhaustive: immaculate conception, son of God, death and resurrection, the Last Supper celebrated with bread and wine, an incarnate God who dies on a cross to redeem all sins, ...
H.
You have to be careful in building a list like this. There are many such lists roaming the internet that are less-than-well-documented and ultimately false. My advice would be to very carefully research each point, validate it, THEN post it.
A list of 100 things, 90% of which prove to be false (or even just dodgy), is counter-productive. The same list culled down to just 10 true items would be valuable.
Dave
The immaculate conception isn't recorded in the gospels.
However the virgin birth is - an entirely different doctrine.
Ok I'll quit nitpicking now
sademo - Can you explain that? What's the distinction?
MissingLink:
The immaculate conception is linked to the doctrine of original sin - Mary is said to have been born naturally to human parents but she was kept without the stain of original sin, so it is she who was 'immaculately conceived'
The virgin birth refers to the birth of Jesus without an earthly father.
The Immaculate Conception Doctrine attempts to explain how a sinful woman could bear a sinless child, but fails miserably in the face of the clear evidence that Mary realized she was in need of a Savior. From The Message Bible:
Luke 1:46 -55 And Mary said,
I'm bursting with God-news;
I'm dancing the song of my Savior God. God took one good look at me, and look what happened—
I'm the most fortunate woman on earth!
What God has done for me will never be forgotten,
the God whose very name is holy, set apart from all others.
His mercy flows in wave after wave
on those who are in awe before him.
He bared his arm and showed his strength,
scattered the bluffing braggarts.
He knocked tyrants off their high horses,
pulled victims out of the mud.
The starving poor sat down to a banquet;
the callous rich were left out in the cold.
He embraced his chosen child, Israel;
he remembered and piled on the mercies, piled them high.
It's exactly what he promised,
beginning with Abraham and right up to now.
Sylvia
You're right, Sademo. I mistranslated it from my native language, it should be virginal conception.
You have to be careful in building a list like this. There are many such lists roaming the internet that are less-than-well-documented and ultimately false. My advice would be to very carefully research each point, validate it, THEN post it.
A list of 100 things, 90% of which prove to be false (or even just dodgy), is counter-productive. The same list culled down to just 10 true items would be valuable.
That's something I often hear when talking to JWs or ex-JWs. They want everything to be well-quoted, even the most obvious and self-evident statements. Anyone who has a more-than-average knowledge of Greek and Phoenician mythology knows there are a lot of similarities between Christianity and mediterranean mystery cults. I could quote a number of books, but that would be counter-productive as well, because there would arise much debate on the reliability of the sources involved. For instance, one of the important reference works about this issue is Frazer's The golden bough. However, whenever the name Frazer pops up in this kind of discussions most people start critizing the messenger, not the message. I could recommend works like 'The pagan Christ' by Tom Harpur or the quite tendentious books by Freke and Gandy, but I'd rather encourage people to go back to the sources.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there aren't parallels. And I'm not saying the Christ myth wasn't influenced by other earlier myths. I'm just saying we don't need a long list of unsubstantiated "parallels" that turn out to be false. There's a popular list about Mithra that claims he had a "virgin birth" for instance, among a bunch of other claims. While technically true, his "birth" was from a rock that he sprang from. Calling that a virgin birth and claiming it's a parallel with the virgin birth myth of Jesus isn't intellectually honest.
It's that sort of "duck's quack doesn't echo" non-fact that I was hoping wouldn't wind up in your list.
Why not start us off with a few good ones?
Dave
"Why are some of the pivotal events of Jesus' life as recorded in the Gospels shamelessly borrowed from pagan predecessors?"
Replace the phrase "pagan predecessors" with "the Old Testament", and I think you have a much better and interesting question. The parallels here far outweigh narrative parallels elsewhere.
You're certainly right about Mithra but you shouldn't forget the worship of Mithra spread throughout Roman Empire in the 1st century AD, so it can hardly be called a pagan pre-decessor. The influence of Mithra on the post-constantine christian church can't be underestimated though. The celebration of Christmas on the 25th of December may (partly) be influenced by Mithra. The most interesting parallels can be observed when comparing christian symbols and metaphors with elements from Greek and Phoenician mythology: for example the mystery cults of Dionysus and Adonis, among others. Dionysus was, for example, the Son of God, born from a virgin. Also real Greek heroes like Alexander the Great were believed to be born from a virgin, conceived by God. Wine and bread were widely used symbols of redemption of sins in a variety of mystery cults. I was curious to hear what some of the christians on JWD think about this.
