Links between Jesus and other ancient Man-Gods

by doogie 40 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  hooberus

  While I think the dying and rising god motif is essential to the understanding of the early Hellenistic Christianity, as testified by Paul, . . .

  The Encyclopedia of Religion has an arcticle on the so-called "dying and rising Gods" by J.Z. Smith. The arcticle should be read by those who claim that such beliefs were the basis of Christianity (if anyone likes I will send a copy of the complete arcticle).

  "The category of dying and rising Gods, once a major topic of scholarly investigation, must now be understood to have been largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or highly ambiguous texts." Encyclopedia of Religion Vol. 4. page 521
• 

  Heatmiser

  I was half expecting "scholar" with his BA MA in religious studies would "enlighten" us with the truth, but I guess he only sticks to WTBS 607 chronology threads.
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  Narkissos

  While I think the dying and rising god motif is essential to the understanding of the early Hellenistic Christianity, as testified by Paul, . . .

  The Encyclopedia of Religion has an arcticle on the so-called "dying and rising Gods" by J.Z. Smith. The arcticle should be read by those who claim that such beliefs were the basis of Christianity (if anyone likes I will send a copy of the complete arcticle).

  "The category of dying and rising Gods, once a major topic of scholarly investigation, must now be understood to have been largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or highly ambiguous texts." Encyclopedia of Religion Vol. 4. page 521

  Hooberus,

  Those of us who are former JWs are not clueless about such "scholarly quotations". Btw anybody can google "Jonathan Z. Smith dying and rising gods" to see what your direct sources are.

  What is usually debatable is not the myth itself, rather its ritualisation (e.g. yearly festival) and interpretation (e.g. as a past or timeless "event," as a natural or supernatural symbol, etc.) which clearly varied according to times, places, and social factors.

  Why not post the article here if you have it scanned?

  Here is an interesting review of another book by JZ Smith:

  http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/jzsmith.html
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  hooberus

  Those of us who are former JWs are not clueless about such "scholarly quotations". Btw anybody can google "Jonathan Z. Smith dying and rising gods" to see what your direct sources are.

  The quote that I listed is in context (in fact it is the complete opening paragraph to the Encyclopedia arcticle). The arcticle starts with my previous quote and ends with the the paragraph: "As the above examples make plain, the category of dying and rising deities is exceedingly dubious. It has been based largely on Christian interest and tenuous evidence. As such, the category is of more interest to the history of scholarship than to the history of religions." p.526
  

  What is usually debatable is not the myth itself, rather its ritualisation (e.g. yearly festival) and interpretation (e.g. as a past or timeless "event," as a natural or supernatural symbol, etc.) which clearly varied according to times, places, and social factors.

  The myths themselves for each god can exist in several versions. Furthermore, it should be assertained as to how much empirical evidence exists for a specific interpretation of a myth, and whether or not the specific claimed parallel to Christianity comes from a pre or post Christian source.
  

  Why not post the article here if you have it scanned?

  I don't have a scanner, though as I said earlier if anyone likes I will send a copy (photo-copy) of the complete arcticle.
• 

  stevenyc

  As a side thought, didn't the Org. teach the similarities of many ancient flood myth stories that prove a global flood happened.

  steve.
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  doogie

  As a side thought, didn't the Org. teach the similarities of many ancient flood myth stories that prove a global flood happened.

  yeah, i had heard that line of reasoning too (because, of COURSE, there couldn't have been more than one flood in the history of mankind, right?...). i think in this case, however, similarities to other stories would probably not be a positive argument for christian truth. that's probably why the org steers clear of this subject.
• 

  zen nudist

  http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/jzsmith.html

  very good article, shows how desperate christians get by denying all parallels to pagan myths and mystery schools in a newer effort to rewrite history .... christians burned books and librarys to hide the facts in the past, now they want to try something similar again.
• 

  Spook

  Look into the books by Tim Callahan:

  Bible Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment

  and

  The Secret Origins of the Bible

  He also writes for skeptic magazine, and has an interesting article on The Passion.
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  Narkissos

  Hooberus

  I didn't mean you were misquoting, just pointing out the general pattern by which (over-)scrupulous scholars find themselves enrolled on an apologetic agenda which is definitely not theirs.

  The myths themselves for each god can exist in several versions.

  As J.Z. Smith himself shows (at least according to Price's review), that goes for the myths of early Christianity too. The dying and rising Christ is essential only to some versions of NT Christianity (e.g. Paul, not Q).

  Before I ask you to send me a copy of the article as you kindly offer, I'll see if I can find it next time I visit my usual Parisian library. Perhaps someone else will find it and post it in the meantime.
• 

  hmike

  I'd like to research this topic further, but I think there will be a lot of information to wade through. Primarily, I would be interested to know the reliability of these other source materials, paticularly with regard to their dating and transmission.

  One assumption that could be made is that these events and circumstances didn't really happen, and that NT writers or editors copied these ideas into the Gospels to make Jesus someone he really wasn't. For a "faith-based" explanation, I'd like to propose that these concepts that had applied to the other "gods" were a foreshadowing, or precursor to Jesus, meaning that God took these concepts that had been previously applied to man-gods that people were aware of, and had Jesus's life conform to these kinds of circumstances, as if to say "OK, this is what you expect of man-gods. Well, Jesus conforms to this." In other words, these ideas weren't simply appropriated by the NT writers for their accounts of the life of Jesus, the events actually did happen as they are recorded in the Gospels?that God simply arranged events of Jesus's life to fit the concepts about other god-men to prove a point to people of pagan cultures. (It might even be possible to say these could be distorted prophecies, where people caught a brief glimpse of the future messiah of the world, but couldn't see it accurately and ascribed it to someone else.) You can speculate how many of these concepts the NT writers were aware of when they wrote their manuscripts, but that is why God moved the writers to include them.

  I realize that some people may have a problem with the idea of God using pagan teachings in His favor. Paul didn't seem to have a problem with it. When he was in Athens (Acts 17), instead of rebuking the Athenians for worshipping false gods, he tells them he has noted how religious they are, and that they believe there is an unknown god. He then proceeds to use this belief to introduce his God, stating a spiritual truth in the process that actually came from a pagan philosopher-poet.