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2009
Was Christianity plagiarized from pagan myths?
Refuting the copycat thesis
Published: 10 January 2009(GMT+10)
I have been a supporter of Creation Ex Nihilo since the early 1990s, and
(thanks to your very good scientific reasoning) I’m still convinced of
Intelligent Design of nature (and still no supporter of
Dawkins), but the article referred in passing to Jesus’ life coming
from earlier, pagan God-men, and the reference for that takes the reader to another
site (“Tektonics” or something very similar) which doesn’t really
answer the theses of Jewish copying of earlier Greek, Egyptian & Indian God-men/saviours.
I’ve read Kersey Graves’ “The Sixteen Messiahs”,
and though he often descends into unscholarly vitriol, much of his book calmly &
convincingly chronicles many pre-Jesus figures whose life details match Jesus’
in all the most important events. Even more convincing (because there was far less
vitriol and far more reasoned argument), was Freke & Gandy’s “The
Jesus Mysteries” (or something very similar — have loaned it
out).
Death-rebirth-death cycles in paganism have nothing to do with the once and for
all resurrection of Jesus. The alleged ‘virgin birth’ parallels were
really stories of gods impregnating women, who were thus not virgins by definition.
I am interested in a calm, reasoned detailed critique of this model (that argues
for previous ‘fully-God/fully-human’ Saviours from other cultures, who
also were born 25th December, who also were born of a virgin, who also were crucified,
and who also were said to have risen in a matter of days later, and who also ascended
back to their ‘Father in Heaven’), and of Freke & Gandy’s
book in particular.
What has impressed me with Biblical Creationists is your calm, reasoned arguments
against Evolutionists. Increasingly, it seems to me that this calm logic seems to
be lacking in those writers who criticise everything that could be named under “Gnosticism”.
In these articles, the critics start to sound like carping Evolutionists who attack
the man, or only the argument with emotive words and an attitude of ridicule.
From all my experience through Marxism, Christianity, the ‘New Age’
movement, etc, emotive & personal attacks always turn out to be a thin covering
for shaky ground (logical-argument wise).
CT
Australia
Dear CT
I’m glad that you are still convinced of intelligent design, but sad that
you are wrong about the even more important issue of the identity of the Designer.
My own book By
Design doesn’t shrink from this vital question, hence the subtitle
Evidence for nature’s Intelligent Designer—the God of the Bible.
Image stock.xchng
For the record, I came accross that Kersey Graves book in NZ in debates with sceptics,
a little while before I had joined CMI and heard of Tekton. It was clear even then
that the so-called copycats were nothing of the kind. E.g.:
- These allegedly crucified saviours were neither crucified nor resurrected
in the original legends.
- Those like Osiris were not at all a parallel to a Resurrection on this earth—he
was not resurrected at all, but became Lord of the Underworld, whereas Jesus appeared
on Earth to 500 people at once and ate fish. Also, death-rebirth-death
cycles in paganism have nothing to do with the once and for all resurrection
of Jesus
- The alleged “virgin birth” parallels were really stories of gods impregnating
women, who were thus not virgins by definition. Mary on the other hand
was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, so had no sexual intercourse until after Jesus
was born. See also The Virginal
Conception of Christ.
There was also the major difference that Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection
were reported well within the lifetime of eye-witnesses, while the reports
that Graves cites were centuries after the alleged events. See for example the articles
under Did Jesus Christ really
rise from the dead? For the reliability of the Resurrection accounts of
the New Testament,
Dates and Authorship of the Gospels to show that they were written soon
after the events they record and recorded accurately and honestly, and
The Textual Reliability of the New Testament for evidence that the text
we have now is essentially what was originally written.
Image stock.xchng
Krishna
I actually addressed most of these arguments before I joined CMI in the co-authored
paper What’s Wrong With
Bishop Spong?
Some of the alleged parallels Graves adduces actually post-date Christianity,
e.g. the usual “Christian parallels” cited about Mithra—see
Mighty Mithraic Madness: Did The Mithraic Mysteries Influence Christianity?
Similarly, Graves’ sources on Krishna also post-date the arrival of Christianity
in India. That is, any borrowing occurred in the opposite direction.
The Tektonics site has documented that Graves has most of his facts wrong, and some
of his “saviours” like “Beddru
of Japan” are nowhere to be found in the literature at all
so look like pure inventions. See also Holding’s page
Confronting the Copycat Thesis: A Multi-Essay Examination, which which links
to some specific examples.
Alleged December 25 parallels are irrelevant, since Christianity doesn’t depend
on this in the slightest. As for celebrating Jesus’ birth on this day, what
happened is that the early Church thought that the best way to win pagans to Christ
was to take over their festivals and replace pagan elements with Christian ones.
It’s much like one major store chain putting on a huge sale, and a rival chain
puts on a sale on the same day to draw away its customers. Indeed, it was so effective
that in my university days, people in Pagan Fellowships complained that the pagan
elements are almost forgotten today!
The pagan copycat idea commits the genetic fallacy, the error of trying to disprove
a belief by tracing it to its source. Copycat ideas are red herrings, since even
if they had some basis, they could not invalidate real history.
Finally, the whole pagan copycat idea commits the
genetic fallacy, the error of trying to disprove a belief by tracing it
to its source. For example, Kekulé thought up the (correct) ring structure
of the benzene molecule after a dream of a snake grasping its tail; chemists don’t
need to worry about correct snake biology or dream psychology to analyse benzene!
Similarly, the rightness or wrongness of these celebrations is independent of the
truth or falsity of their alleged parallels. Jesus’s death and Resurrection
are well attested facts of history.
The Impossible Faith by J.P. Holding demonstrates 17 reasons why Christianity
could not have survived in the ancient world unless it had indisputable evidence
of the resurrection of Jesus. So the copycat ideas are red herrings, since even
if they had some basis, they could not invalidate real
history.
If this is not enough, you should be aware that even the ardently anti-Christian
group Internet Infidels has warned of the gross historical inaccuracies in Kersey
Graves’ book:
The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors: Or Christianity Before Christ
is unreliable, but no comprehensive critique exists. Most scholars immediately recognize
many of his findings as unsupported and dismiss Graves as useless. …:
- Graves often does not distinguish his opinions and theories from what his sources
and evidence actually state.
- Graves often omits important sources and evidence.
- Graves often mistreats in a biased or anachronistic way the sources he does use.
- Graves occasionally relies on suspect sources.
- Graves does little or no source analysis or formal textual criticism.
- Graves’ work is totally uninformed by modern social history (a field that
did not begin to be formally pursued until after World War II, i.e., after Graves
died).
- Graves’ conclusions and theories often far exceed what the evidence justifies,
and he treats both speculations and sound theories as of equal value.
- Graves often ignores important questions of chronology and the actual order of plausible
historical influence, and completely disregards the methodological problems this
creates.
- Graves’ work lacks all humility, which is unconscionable given the great uncertainties
that surround the sketchy material he had to work with.
- Graves’ scholarship is obsolete, having been vastly improved upon by new methods,
materials, discoveries, and textual criticism in the century since he worked. In
fact, almost every historical work written before 1950 is regarded as outdated and
untrustworthy by historians today.
It seems unwise to rely on a book that even informed anti-Christians regard as extremely
unreliable and embarrassing, especially when your
eternal destiny is at stake.
Freke and Gandy are also fringe authors not scholars, and their claims are
unsupported in the academic world, which is hardly friendly to Christianity.
Regards
Jonathan Sarfati
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(from the instructive
Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions? By Ronald Nash, Christian
Research Institute):
Seven arguments against christian dependence on the mysteries
I conclude by noting seven points that undermine liberal efforts to show that first-century
Christianity borrowed essential beliefs and practices from the pagan mystery religions.
- Arguments offered to prove a Christian dependence on the mysteries illustrate the
logical fallacy of false cause. This fallacy is committed whenever someone reasons
that just because two things exist side by side, one of them must have caused the
other. As we all should know, mere coincidence does not prove causal connection.
Nor does similarity prove dependence.
- Many alleged similarities between Christianity and the mysteries are either greatly
exaggerated or fabricated. Scholars often describe pagan rituals in language they
borrow from Christianity. The careless use of language could lead one to speak of
a Last Supper in Mithraism or a baptism in the cult of Isis. It is inexcusable nonsense
to take the word savior with all of its New Testament connotations and apply it
to Osiris or Attis as though they were savior-gods in any similar sense.
- The chronology is all wrong. Almost all of our sources of information about the
pagan religions alleged to have influenced early Christianity are dated very late.
We frequently find writers quoting from documents written 300 years later than Paul
in efforts to produce ideas that allegedly influenced Paul. We must reject the assumption
that just because a cult had a certain belief or practice in the third or fourth
century after Christ, it therefore had the same belief or practice in the first
century.
- Paul would never have consciously borrowed from the pagan religions. All of our
information about him makes it highly unlikely that he was in any sense influenced
by pagan sources. He placed great emphasis on his early training in a strict form
of Judaism (Phil. 3:5). He warned the Colossians against the very sort
of influence that advocates of Christian syncretism have attributed to him, namely,
letting their minds be captured by alien speculations (Col. 2:8).
- Early Christianity was an exclusivistic faith. As J. [Gresham] Machen explains,
the mystery cults were nonexclusive. A man could become initiated into the mysteries
of Isis or Mithras without at all giving up his former beliefs; but if he were to
be received into the Church, according to the preaching of Paul, he must forsake
all other Saviors for the Lord Jesus Christ…. Amid the prevailing syncretism
of the Greco-Roman world, the religion of Paul, with the religion of Israel, stands
absolutely alone. This Christian exclusivism should be a starting point for all
reflection about the possible relations between Christianity and its pagan competitors.
Any hint of syncretism in the New Testament would have caused immediate controversy.
- Unlike the mysteries, the religion of Paul was grounded on events that actually
happened in history. The mysticism of the mystery cults was essentially nonhistorical.
Their myths were dramas, or pictures, of what the initiate went through, not real
historical events, as Paul regarded Christ’s death and resurrection to be.
The Christian affirmation that the death and resurrection of Christ happened to
a historical person at a particular time and place has absolutely no parallel in
any pagan mystery religion.
- What few parallels may still remain may reflect a Christian influence on the pagan
systems. As Bruce Metzger has argued, ‘It must not be uncritically assumed
that the Mysteries always influenced Christianity, for it is not only possible but
probable that in certain cases, the influence moved in the opposite direction.’
It should not be surprising that leaders of cults that were being successfully challenged
by Christianity should do something to counter the challenge. What better way to
do this than by offering a pagan substitute? Pagan attempts to counter the growing
influence of Christianity by imitating it are clearly apparent in measures instituted
by Julian the Apostate, who was the Roman emperor from AD
361 to 363.
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