@Diogenes sister, I’m sorry that Bender makes
demands on your brain but you’ve got to agree he is more fun than Jesus?
Here’s where the trouble lies...in taking
stories on board, certain people not only think they are true but make them sacred as well. This
generation will know Bender is a story character but when robots become
commonplace, future robots might think he really existed!
Qualitatively, Jesus
and Bender both are the product of the human imagination. What a relief it is to
give up on the sacred!
@ Perry, your very lengthy referenced material
was interesting and informative. Someone here very recently said how when the
WTS came up with counter arguments they found it useful as they actually made
for a convincing case against the society. I honestly think you have done the
same here.
The mythicist
position on Jesus is that his story, his persona, has a pagan pedigree which is,
as in your proffered document, refuted mainly on the fact that he does not
follow all the attributes given to earlier God-men. Of course he does not, that
is the nature of story-telling when dispersed linguistically, ethnically and
over time. What makes the myth stick however is that although the characters
change names and appearance; their function in the mythical plot does not. For
example Jesus (outside of JWism) is the son of God but himself a god. This
harmonises with the myth; he is born at midwinter (not “of the Virgin” but IN
the Virgin of the ancient zodiac) and dies sacrificially at the spring equinox
and returns to his solar father in the heavens who is also a Sun god.
These key attributes or tropes are found in all
of the earlier sacrificial God-men saviours. The reason being that underneath
the familiar story is yet an earlier and more primitive pagan acknowledgement; a
universally held mythos from pre-literate, oral tradition. These are based on
the meanings and cyclic nature of the constellations of stars, Sun and Moon.
Jesus
ultimately is drawn from the annual story of the birth and rising illumination
of the Sun through the solar year. Solar gods must die and take the value of
their life to redeem mankind by going their way to their solar father in heaven,
the reason for this (from the source myth) is from the observable fact
that light at the spring equinox appears
suddenly to begin to shine much brighter. The explanation given was that the radiant son of the Sun God
and his solar father are now ruling together
from the heavens in glory.
The Jesus story is nothing other than the solar myth
vastly elaborated and dressed up for acceptability as a sacred narrative to the Levantine audience.
To remain thinking that it is from God is naive.
