Part 2 The Greatest Story Ever Sold

by hooberus 30 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  hooberus

  
  Scholar, Visionary

  Acharya S has gained mastery in several religions, as well other esoterica and the supernatural, and has a number of students and devotees. She is also the author of several books, including The Christ Conspiracy , Paradise Found and The Aquarian Manifesto: A Handbook for Survival into and a Blueprint for the New Age . Her current book is Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled . Articles by Acharya S have been published in Exposure, Steamshovel Press , Paranoia, Abyss and Cyberculture Counterconspiracy II , Wake Up Down There! The Excluded Middle Anthology , as well as other periodicals and ezines.

  The above items were taken from Acharya S' website

  http://www.truthbeknown.com/

  Acharya S. has written a book "The Christ Conspiracy: The greatest story ever sold"

  The following is a refutation.

  Articles by Mike Licona A Refutation of Acharya S's book, The Christ Conspiracy. Acharya S is a skeptic with an interest in mythology who has written a book entitled The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. This book presents an hypothesis of how Christianity came into being. The occasion for this paper is to assess Murdock’s major claims in a brief manner in terms of their accuracy and whether her book is a worthwhile contribution on the origin of Christianity. The paper will sample some of her major claims. No attempts will be made to defend the Christian worldview.
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  noko

  She can make a nut blush for not being nutty enough. Good read. I don't think any demon could be that stupid to make some of the claims hinted by her but then again how many will flock to her lies?

  I do feel pain for those coming out of the JW's who where betrayed searching for the truth and finding this crap littering the road.
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  noko

  Hooberus, that was a good find and a good read.
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  DevonMcBride

  I just finished reading this book and found it fascinating.
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  peacefulpete

  Is there anyone out there who is truly interested in this topic and desires a rebuttal of this refutation from the christian site Hooberus has posted? A person is of course free to believe what they wish but as is always the case such an emotionally charged topic has invited a plethora of opinions all over the spectrum and sorting out fact from opinion requires some effort.
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  hooberus

  Acharya S. (Murdock) has responded to the above arcticle. Mr. Liconda then responded back.

  1. Murdock responded to this paper with "A Rebuttal to Mike Licona's 'Refutation of The Christ Conspiracy.'" You may read this rebuttal by clicking on the following hyperlink: Acharya's Responds to Licona's Rebuttal.
  
  2. Licona replied to Acharya's rebuttal with another paper and may be read by clicking on the following hyperlink: "Licona Replies to Acharya: Part 2"
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  Pleasuredome

  have you noticed in her pic that she's sort of got a david icke look about her? especially the eyes. not that its significant like.
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  rocketman
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  hooberus

  Was the concept of a crucified saviour borrowed from paganism? The item below came from the "pagan origins" site attacking christianity as being a copy-cat religion. A casual reader would think that the image pre-dates Jesus's crucifixion by over 200 years. Dionysus is one of the myths that it is claimed by some as being the basis for elements of Christianity.

  I responded to these items in the following post:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/45937/5.ashx

  While it is true that crosses and crusifixion predated Christianity the claim has been made by some that before Christ there were other religious figures who were crucified. The Pagan Origins site under "dionysus" depicts a carving of a human-like figure on a cross with the name "bakkus" and then states "This image was made two hunded years before Christians first pictured Christ on the cross."

  Does anyone know if this caving contains an actual date?

  If it doesn't contain an actual date then how was it dated and is this date generally accepted?

  Also the cliam that the carving was made two hundred years before Christains first pictured Christ on the cross (if true) would not necessarily mean that the carving itself pre-dated the Chistian message of Christ crucified. It may only show that it pre-dated Christian pictures or carvings of this event. (The early Christians many of whom were jewish might have been opposed to images.)

  In the sites description of the legend of dionysus, he dionysis "was torn apart by the Titans, boiled, and eaten. Only leaving his heart." This seems to be a very different manner of death than crucifixion and would make this carved image seem to be later than the original legend. Since the original story of dionysis gives a manner of death very different from crucifixon it makes one ask: From where did the followers of dionysis get the idea of him being crucified? Perhaps this was an interpolation from Christianity and not the other way around.

  It appears that my post was correct from the following:

  http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_04_02_04_DDD.html

  Now let us add in those unique items posited by Freke and Gandy. We should first note the most obvious, for it graces the cover of their work: Based on "a small picture tucked away in the appendices of an old academic book" (though what the cite is for this book, we are not told), they feature a drawing of "a third-century CE amulet" with a depiction of a crucified figure which names "Orpheus Bacchus" as the figure, another name for D. According to Freke and Gandy, this shows that "To the initiated, these were both names for essentially the same figure." [12-13] To which we reply: That's the initiated's problem. The uncritical syncretism of a single person (the maker/wearer of the amulet) provides no evidence for the copycat thesis; least of all when the evidence dates several hundred years after the time of Christ (as does indeed all their evidence of D being crucified [52]). They also state incorrectly that there are no representations of the crucified Jesus before the fifth century; as Raymond Brown noted in Death of the Messiah, there are about a half-dozen depictions of the crucified Jesus dated between the second and fifth century, and even if this were not so, the literary depiction in the Gospels amounts to the same thing. Freke and Gandy chose rather a poor examplar to feature on their cover.

  No wonder the "pagan origins" site didn't place a date under their carving. if they did it would have shot down their argument.
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  logansrun

  This book by "Achyra" has bee lambasted by scholars -- but that doesn't mean the Bible is the word of God, either. She puts forth some rather convoluted arguments according to Tim Callahan in one of the latest issues of "Skeptic" magazine. Interestingly, Callahan has his own books, much more worth reading, which are critical of the Bible.

  Wake up to the post-Enlightenment world, Hooberus. The Bible, read as the literal truth word for word, is so incredibly outrageous that anyone with intellectual honesty must reject it as such.

  Bradley