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.
The fact that the orignal legend of Dionysus has him being torn apart by titans boiled and eaten, and only after Christianity is Dionysus portraied as being crucifed, should show that the crucifixion of Dionysus was borrowed from Christianity and not the other way around. The above link goes through many of the so-called parallels and shows that many of these are not real parallels at all, or date after the start of Christianity.
