It appears that some people just make up "facts" in order to prove their point!
I am reminded of the saying, "Upon these conclusions I base these facts!"
I hate it when people do that.
--VM44
Saviours of the world?
by fullofdoubtnow 31 Replies latest watchtower bible
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LittleToe
Interesting discussion on a topic that has come around a couple of times. I especially like Leo's work on this, and offer thanks again for the efforts entered into to air the topic a little more comprehensively.
A comparative study of the world's religions is worth entering into but some of the more extreme fringes of opinion, while of interest and mentally stimulating, can often reveal their biases.
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Leolaia
I just came across this, a quite handy debunking of the false parallels promoted in this thread:
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dilaceratus
Amazingly, all of these gems can be found in Mr Philip Gardiner's book, Secrets of the Serpent: In Search of the Sacred past, which, for some unknown reason, Google seems to think is an architecture book, but is actually just a hastily thrown together mish-mash of Theosophist trash. (As might be surmised from Leolaia's pointing out the Blavatsky provenance.)
If the description of the author on the above referenced page doesn't cause you to break a rib with laughter, this one will. "He [Gardiner] has a Masters [sic] Degree in Strategic Marketing and 9 [sic!] diploma’s [sic!] ranging from Personnel Management through to Holistic Medicine and the craft [!] of Etymology." (How many non-Gardiner Google hits on the string "craft of Etymology", you wonder? Two.) No doubt Mr Gardiner's mad HR talents have proved invaluable to him in his researches into the "reptilian agenda," and, given the construction of the above sentence, clearly his historical handiwork with words has paid off in a large way.
This chap is hardly a Joseph Campbell (although, why on earth anyone would want another Joseph Campbell is beyond my ken)-- in fact, he seems to like to think of himself as "the next Graham Hancock." Which is about all that needs to be said about that.
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WhatSexRU
Hey Leolaia,
Thanks for the link.
http://www.thedevineevidence.com/jesus_similarities.html
I noticed this:
An important difference between Jesus and the other figures in this article is the existence of verifiable facts surrounding Jesus' life: we know the approximate year of His birth and death, numerous records exist which verify His existence …
Is this really true? I always thought there was a ten-year gap between the death of Herod and the census of Quirinius. But maybe I’ve just been reading a lot of Internet trash. However, I did notice that the author didn’t bring any facts to support that part of his claim.
Fyi, this has motivated me to start thread called “Affirmative arguments for the non-existence of Jesus” where we can discuss it.
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Leolaia
dilaceratus....It looks like the ultimate source of these lists is Kersey Graves' The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors (1875), the full text of which is online at http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/kersey_graves/16/ and there is a critique at the same site. There is some interesting info on the Wikipedia page devoted to him:
Graves made leaps of logic similar to those of Alexander Hislop. Graves's central thesis that Christendom is a mere retelling of Pagan myths, echoes the similar claim of Alexander Hislop, who wrote The Two Babylons, although Hislop intended only to nullify the claims of the Catholic Church and prove they where serving Satan. As with Hislop, modern scholarship has cast serious doubt on the veracity of such claims, and demonstrated that Graves' scholarship is deficient. Graves massaged his data to fit his thesis, and where he had no data he falsified it. He often failed to cite proper sources for verification; although, "many of the most important facts collated in this work were derived from Sir Godfrey Higgins' Anacalypsis" [1]. Graves' writings today are read by people seeking conspiracy theories, and remain popular in some circles strictly opposed to Christianity as a source of discredition of the claims of the faith. He is also a major source for Acharya S, author of The Christ Conspiracy. His writings even make a brief showing in The Da Vinci Code.
In terms of bad or false "scholarship", he is in good company with Hislop -- as well as with Tony Bushby today.
WhatSexRU....As you might expect, I don't agree with all the arguments given, especially those predicated more on faith. While I concur that there are indeed problems and/or questions with the timing and historticity of Jesus, there is indeed a discontinuity here between the gospels' locating of Jesus in a recent historical period and the other traditions which either situate their figures in the distant past or a timeless present. I didn't get to see your thread until today....I would say that Price gives probably the most able and informed argument for the "Christ myth" hypothesis, tho I am more persuaded by the views of Wells and others that does not attribute the entirety of the Jesus tradition to mythic or OT exegetical tradition, but which has a historical figure or figures lying behind at least some of the sayings and traditions.
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dilaceratus
Yeah, all of the "300-odd similarities between Jesus and Krsna" pages scattered over the Internet come from Graves [1]. As the Wikipedia article mentions, though, Anacalypsis and (not mentioned, but probably as or more importantly) the work of Louis Jacolliot (a major influence on Blavatsky) were where Graves cribbed all of his information from, in order to weave his conspiracy theories.
As weak as Graves is, though, he was living right at the time when spiritism and materialism were starting their split, and in a place where the self-taught often made real contributions. Genuine investigations of the supernatural and its historical foundations were not only warranted, but essential, and it is to be expected that, like Hislop, all sorts of cracked and half-informed hypotheses were in the air. However arrogantly and, at times, ignorantly, presented these ideas were, they did represent (for the most part) testable explanations.
What's discouraging and infuriating is that more than a century after these hypotheses were failed due to faulty or incomplete data, bad logic, or pure fraud, they are still being flogged by the ignorant to the gullible.
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[1] Honestly, though-- How come nobody is naming their children Kersey (OE cærse, watercress)? It's fantastic!
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Narkissos
I would say that Price gives probably the most able and informed argument for the "Christ myth" hypothesis, tho I am more persuaded by the views of Wells and others that does not attribute the entirety of the Jesus tradition to mythic or OT exegetical tradition, but which has a historical figure or figures lying behind at least some of the sayings and traditions.
Actually Price (at least in The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man) allows for that too -- because many Gospel stories which are not directly traceable to myth or literature in the strictest sense may echo historical characters such as the Qumran "Master of righteousness," John the Baptist, James the Just, or more anecdotic figures like Philo's Carabas who is treated just as Jesus in the Passion stories to mock the "king of the Jews" Herod Agrippa (In Flaccum 36-38), Simon bar Giora who is welcome into Jerusalem with palm branches to cleanse the temple (BJ V,ix,11), Jesus son of Ananias who foretells the ruin of the temple and is sent to the Roman procurator (idem, VI,v,3), the Samaritans slaughtered by Pilatus (AJ XVIII, 35ff; BJ II, 169ff; cf. the Galileans of Luke 13:1) or the better known Judas the Galilean and Theudas (anachronically mentioned in Acts 5:36f). In a sense there is certainly room for one more historical person sharing some of the above features, but Price's main point is that such additional figure (the "historical Jesus") is rarely if ever needed. That's short of proving that a historical Jesus never existed, as Price readily admits. But it certainly shows that the "evidence" for a historical Jesus is far from conclusive imo.
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Gill
You make excellent points as always, Leolaia!! They are always much appreciated in putting 'things' in perspective.
I find, that though every detail is NOT correct, what matters is that these myths do have their sources in even more ancient myths even though they are NOT identical
Enough for me is the 'virgin births' and the 'I'll be back' scenarios.
It is liberating to know where traditions come from, but also good to know how our ancestors thought!
There really is 'Nothing new under the Sun!'
Thanks Leolaia!
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