Jesus Vs Horus (page 9)

EntirelyPossible

You could get the same results from Lord of the Rings

Absolutely not true, Cofty. In LOTR, the King DID return and save his people ;)

EntirelyPossible

Its obvious you are committed to defending biblical inerrancy at any cost.

Maybe we should ressurect this thread... http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/201747/1/Biblical-Prophecies-written-BEFORE-fulfillment

Black Sheep

What about Robin Hood? Real or legend?

At least Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor.

Jesus killed fig trees and drowned herds of pigs.

Which of these legends are populated by the most benevolent characters?

cofty

yourmomma - we agree that Justin Martyr never admitted that gospel writers stole myths from pagans, I never said otherwise.

For the third time now, I quoted Martyr becasue believers like Christ Alone deny any similarity between Jesus myths and pagan myths.

I then looked at a specific example involving the Dionysus wine miracle. Just to be clear Justin Martyr would probably not have agreed that Johnn invented the whole wedding feast at Cana story.

Hope that helps.

I think you'd find it easier to build a stronger argument for gentile/pagan influences on 2nd century Christianity and later. For example, syncretisitc influences between things like the Eucharist and Mithraism, or egyptian mystery religions and gnostic christian beliefs.

I don't think the earliest followers of Jesus considered him God or a god-man. Note: I'm not saying any of the above from a JW perspective but from various books from respectable authors like Ehrman, Eisemann, and Crossan.

transhuman68

LOL, it was Elisha who created the miracle of filling every empty container with oil (2 Kings 4:1- 7). There are a lot of links between Elijah/Elisha, Moses and Jesus. Jesus was in fact a fictional figure made up almost entirely from Old Testament scriptures, so there isn't much evidence of Egyptian or pagan influences.

cofty

I don't think the earliest followers of Jesus considered him God or a god-man. - Midget-Sasquatch

I agree that belief in the divinity of Jesus is a later development however it begins to emerge in John's gospel.

I am not claiming that Jesus is based on any pagan hero only that there are influences. The Dionysus wine miracle is an example early in John's gospel, I beleive that the post resurrection fish miracle is another.

Just for the record I don't doubt there was a Jesus of history.

mP

@Cofty

How do you explain that he is never mentioned in Roman or Jewish writings but several other leaders of rebellous and religious groups in Judea are ? John the Baptist cannot be found as well. I would say at best Jesus is a fabrication that is a composite man built from myth and other mythical religious leaders.

cofty

Mp - I think there are some compelling reasons to believe that there was a historical person behind the myths.

Take the birth narratives as an example. Matthew and Luke both want Jesus born in Bethlehem to establish his royal link to king David, but there is a problem in that the historical Jesus was from Galilee.

The two gospel writers come up with different and mutually incompatible ways of achieving this.

Matthew begins with Mary and Joseph living in Bethlehem. His problem is to get Jesus up to Galilee so he invents Herod's slaughter of the innocents and the flight and subsequent exodus from Egypt, with obvious echoes of Moses. They return to Israel when an angel tells them Heord is dead but..

".. when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene." - Matt.2:22,23 (let's leave the blunder of the Nazarene reference for now)

Luke goes the other way; he has Joseph and Mary living in Galilee from the start and invents the far-fetched story of a census to get then down to Bethlehem just in time for the birth. Can you imagine being told to return to your hometown for registration and going to a place where an ancestor lived 1000 years previously? Mary and Joseph then go to the temple to make the prescribed offering a month after the birth and then go home to Nazareth.

Apart from the fact that this contradiction cannot be reconciled, the more interesting point is the fact that there must have been a historical reality behind it. If Jesus was invented out of whole cloth there was no need for Matthew or Luke to go to these lengths. Only if there really was a historical Jesus of Nazareth do we need to invent these pantomimes to accommodate the reality.

mP

COFTY

Take the birth narratives as an example. Matthew and Luke both want Jesus born in Bethlehem to establish his royal link to king David, but there is a problem in that the historical Jesus was from Galilee.

The two gospel writers come up with different and mutually incompatible ways of achieving this.

Matthew begins with Mary and Joseph living in Bethlehem. His problem is to get Jesus up to Galilee so he invents Herod's slaughter of the innocents and the flight and subsequent exodus from Egypt, with obvious echoes of Moses. They return to Israel when an angel tells them Heord is dead but..

MP

There are points of interest with regards to the Bethlehem portion of both Mt and Lk. Before i present my proofs im going to state thatt there is no prophecy and the Jews did not expect a Messiah to born in Bethlehem. Xians just made this up after being impressed with Mt saying that Jesus birth was prophecy.

Mt or Lk copied is not important but both seem to have misred or misunderstood Micah 5:2 which "predicts" the Messiah to be born in Bethlehem. They tried to invent a prophecy being present in the OT for their god man jesus.

http://www.watchtower.org/e/bible/mic/chapter_005.htm

“And you, O Beth´le·hem Eph´ra·thah, the one too little to get to be among the thousands of Judah, from you there will come out to me the one who is to become ruler in Israel, whose origin is from early times, from the days of time indefinite.

“Therefore he will give them up until the time that she who is giving birth actually gives birth. And the rest of his brothers will return to the sons of Israel.

“And he will certainly stand and do shepherding in the strength of Jehovah, in the superiority of the name of Jehovah his God. And they will certainly keep dwelling, for now he will be great as far as the ends of the earth. And this one must become peace. As for the As·syr´i·an, when he comes into our land and when he treads upon our dwelling towers, we shall also have to raise up against him seven shepherds, yes, eight dukes of mankind. And they will actually shepherd the land of As·syr´i·a with the sword, and the land of Nim´rod in its entrances. And he will certainly bring about deliverance from the As·syr´i·an, when he comes into our land and when he treads upon our territory.

The scripture of course does not say that, it says some Messiah will be born in the tribe of Bethelem Ephraim. It also says the Messiah will defeat the Assyrians. In their wish to show Jesus to be the predicted one they took the best match scripture they could find and hoped nobody would read the text in full.

Something else you may not be aware of is the name of Bethlehem means "house of bread". Mary the virgin is of course Virgo the virgin and she also represents the harvest of wheat. In those days people were familiar with this goddess story. In later time the Catholics would adopt the mother goddess and upgrade Mary. This made it easy to adopt churches like those in Egypt which were dedicated to Isis, who was a mother of a son Horus who was a saviour god aswell. This is just the start of the Egyptian connection to OT.

COFTY

Can you imagine being told to return to your hometown for registration and going to a place where an ancestor lived 1000 years previously? Mary and Joseph then go to the temple to make the prescribed offering a month after the birth and then go home to Nazareth.

MP

Now of course the stories are absurd, the inventions and reasoning are stupid. THey obviously prepared the story at a time, when most people were illiterate and would have no way of verifying the facts or even understanding how real governments worked. Nobody today would honestly think a gov would declare such a stupid way to collect taxes.

Im going to state i believe the gospels go to great lengths to present a peaceful Christ, and haing Joseph go to great pains shows a good example of obvience to the state and the importance of paying taxes, something the Jews at the time were opposed to doing. This is a side note but paying of taxes seems to be a strange message that is part of the gospels.

The gospels try very hard to present Jesus as a super human, hence the miracle birth. Everybody in the OT who is somebody has an extraordinary birth. They didnt seem to care if they lied from the very beginning.

I read the other day a book that shows that David and Solomon can be found in the Egyptian pharoahs. There are pharoahs who share daughters, sons, conquests, booty records that match the stories given to David Solomon. The names of the Jewish characters are pretty strikingly similar to the Egyptian and are noticable. If anhone is intersted ill find a link to the story.

Jesus Vs Horus

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