The Greatest Story Ever Copied

I was very careful not to overextend myself in that part of the book. A wild exaggeration of a truth may cause the truth to be disregarded.

The trend among many skeptics these days is to say that Jesus was a carbon copy of the other savior gods that preceeded him. I'm not sure about this claim.

I'm more certain that there are elements of Jesus' story that are found in other myths. Dionysus did change water into wine. Moses did survive a tyrant's infanticidal rampage. etc. We do know that Christianity, as it grew, assimilated other religions and their traditions. That's how we got Easter and Christmas. It's quite possible that the very story of Jesus followed that pattern.

Hence my assertion that Jesus may be a composite of many, not a carbon copy of any of them (although Mithras comes close).

"although Mithras comes close"

YouTube - Mithra: A Prototype for Jesus? No!

Just so you know, I am not an apologist, just a nitpicker :P

Granted because rome is where christianity as we know it really got started, it is going to absorb the local flavor. I'm pretty sure the pagan clerics changed their traditions as little as possible when they switched faiths. 

I consider Doherty, Humphreys, Acharya and Price to be more of an expert on this matter than Kabane. However, let's assume that he's right and these other scholars have no idea what they're talking about (or they're lying for some reason). Why didn't the early Christian apologists say so? If Jesus was so different from Mithras and the others, why did Justin Martyr use the "Devil copied Jesus in advance" story?

Again, I must agree that we have to be careful not to exaggerate. I don't believe that Jesus was a carbon copy. I do think there's reason to believe he was a composite of many different myths and earlier gods may have served as inspiration.

Well you've gone over my head. In case you haven't figured it out, people who rely on youtube videos to support their claims are usually not experts in these fields lol

But just guessing here, the devil copies thing sounds to me like saying that any sort of demigod other than jesus is some sort of cambion, since there is only one god and has only one begotten son. Or something like that. Witches/warlocks vs prophets of god is likely similar reasoning. I think it would be funny if jesus did come back, in salem and was burned for witchcraft.

Have you ever read the Malleus Maleficarum?

Sorry.  Suffice to say I was careful and used multiple sources in that part of the book.  My first edition did rely too much on claims that Jesus was a carbon copy and I backpeddled on that somewhat in the second.

It may still be true.  I haven't done as much first hand research as Acharya S.  Jesus might have been a carbon copy for all I know.  I'm just not comfortable going out on that limb.  Instead, I point out how the Jesus story "contains elements" of earlier stories.

Plus, there's no reason to.  My primary reason for doubting the historical Jesus has more to do with what I've read from Christian sources: The Bible's contradictory story, it's unlikely claims, the apologists writings (past and present) and their feeble attempts to explain it all.

It's kind of similar to the 9/11 part of Zeitgeist.  It's enough to say that Bush was negligent (not complicit) in stopping the terrorists and that once the attack happened, there were those in the White House willing to cynically take advantage of the situation.  Screaming that 9/11 was an inside job only discredits the legitimate efforts to find answers to troubling questions about the events.  This is another example of what I mean when I say that a wild exaggeration of a truth can discredit the search for the truth.

In sum, is Jesus an exact replica of Horus?  I'm not so sure.  Is he a composite of numerous other myths, elements of which are gathered here and there?  That seems very likely.

I'm not sure if I'm reading too much into this, but I think you are being a little defensive. When I said "people who rely on youtube videos to support their claims are usually not experts in these fields" I was reffering to myself, mostly because my arguments are stolen from youtube christians. And by over my head I meant I do not know who Doherty, Humphreys, Acharya and Price are.

Honestly I don't know how much of the jesus storey was unique (though mostly fictional), but unless I found suffient evidence to the contrary I personally wouldn't make any claims that jesus is a plagerization.

I understand that you're playing devil's advocate here and I always appreciate that.  It's important to look at something from all sides of the issue.  There's no defensiveness on my part other than to say I have mutliple sources for what I've claimed. 

Something else to consider: it's undeniable that the idea of the messiah as a lamb of God is incompatible with the Jewish concepts of this leader.  To the Jews, the Messiah was to be a glorious warlord for Israel, not a savior for all of humanity.  Furthermore, Jewish laws that demand a personal relationship with Yahweh, personal atonement rituals and undivided adoration for Yahweh are incompatible with the idea of Jesus as the intercessor for humanity.  Indeed, the two coontradict each other.  Judaism forbids an intercessor.  Christianity requires it. 

So since the idea of Jesus as the Lamb of God is incompatible with Judaism, it seems that we must look elsewhere for the inspiration for that idea.  Why not the pagan concepts of the divine being out of reach and a demigod intercessor being required?  We also know about Dec 25 and Easter being pagan holidays incorporated by the early Christian church.  The water-to-wine miracle didn't get added until the Gospel of John.  Most likely this was incorporated by Dyonisus, the god of wine.  The story grew with the telling.  Elements got added here and there, likely inspired by outside pagan concepts. 

Christianity has always been a synthesizer of other religions.  What it can't annihilate, it incorporates.  You know what I saw at a book store recently?  "The Gospel According to Harry Potter".  No doubt they do a "Beowulf" on the story, with Harry fighting for Jesus and Voldamort working for the devil. 

I get what you're saying about how Christianity's philosophies are not wholly original.

However I am more specifically referring to Jesus as a character, and having strong resemblance to demigods.

It's just I feel this

Is a little misleading

I think a good analogy is how superman came before spiderman, but no one claims they are the same character. Sure they both zoom around a cityscape in red and blue tights fighting bad guys with enhanced strength, but it's not like any one is going to mistake one for the other.

YTMND - Spider-Man's Greatest Bible Stories!

The Madonna with child image was probably inspired by Isis.  I'm not the first person to point this out.  Many scholars have commented on this point. This too is an element of the story.  A piece of Jesus that came from Egypt.  Other parts came from India, from Persia and from Greece.  Judea was, after all, at the crossroads of civilization.  What better a place to come up with a synthesized religion?

Interesting topic. I too wondered about the legitamacy of many of those claims about Jesus being a carbon copy of the other gods. I went to a site that listed all the Hindu gods. Buddha was born a virgin! Buddha came 500 years before Jesus.

Some other claims state that the Hindu god Vishnu died and resurrected. Although he had many incarnations, I don't recall reading that he actually died and rose the way Jesus did. I took a college course on the world's religions but I don't remember that detail.

I'm going to browse through God Vs. the Bible and see what else is there.

Here you go:

http://evolvefish.com/

And that's "dude-ette."

It's certainly an interesting topic of discussion.

Have you read Greg Kane's "Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth" website?  (http://www.pocm.info)

I kinda like his idea that the Jesus story wasn't exactly copied from other myths, it just grew up in an era where dying-and-rising godmen who performed such miracles were very common, and many of the ideas were simply absorbed.

There are some interesting points in POCM though, for example, when Jesus heals a blind man with his spit (John 9), it's taken as an example of a miracle.  However, when Roman emperor Vespasian does exactly the same thing, it's accepted as a myth only.  When Jesus raises a young girl from the dead (and then claims she was just sleeping), it's taken as an example of a miracle.  But when Apollonius of Tyana raises a young girl from the dead (and then claims she was just sleeping), it's accepted as a myth only.

For those of you yet to read it, I'd recommend the POCM site.  It's pretty good!

BTW, this book is a good read too.  I'm just about to start Chapter 10.