Son of God;
A travelling preacher who had 12 disciples;
Performed miracles;
Known as the "good shepherd", "the way the truth the light", "redeemer", "saviour"
Died at Easter
Sound familiar? Well it should. However, I'm not talking about who you might be thinking I'm talking about. I'm not talking about Jesus; I'm talking about Mithras.
The cult of Mithras pre-existed Christianity for at least 600 years. The similiarites between Jesus and Mithras were so similar and the early Church fathers were so fearful that their sheep would discover this that they claimed that the devil went back in time and created the story. Have you heard anything more ridiculous in your life??
Oh, and Mithras isn't the only demi-god that was born at Christmas and killed at Easter. There was Attis, Adonis and several more. Like the Mithras story, all those demi-god stories pre-dated Christ by several hundred years.
So, this begs the question. Which one is historically true? Which ones are myth? To me, it's obvious that NONE of them happened and they are all myth. Here's why:
One: We know that Caesar Augustus NEVER ordered such a census as Luke says he did. As I've said before, we have excellent records of that period of Roman history and no census was ever recorded. It would also have been logistically impossible.
Two: Look carefully at the geneologies in both Matthew and Luke. They contradict themselves. I've heard the contradictions explained away by being told that one lineage was Mary's and the other was Joseph's. Not true. Luke clearly states that it's Joseph's family tree and not Mary's.
Three: There was no massacre of the innocents by Herod as Matthew describes. There is absolutely no historical proof of this. Herod was a tyrant and despised by the Jews, but this is one crime he didn't commit.
Four: Quirinius and Herod were not contemporary. Herod was dead by the time Quirinius was governor of Syria, which Luke claims he was in his attempt to date Jesus' birth.
We all know that Christianity stole (or borrowed) things from the cultures it imposed itself upon. That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about outright plagarism. There were no copyright laws back then, so no one had an issue with it. However, Christianity is the one religion that claims this stuff actually, historically happened. They claimed Jesus was unique. Obviously not true when so many parallels existed between Jesus and the other demi-gods. It doesn't bother me that Christianity stole the date of Jesus' birth. After all, Queen Elizabeth was born in April and the official celebration of her birthday is the Trooping of the Colour ceremony in June. However, if you strip away all the myth that pre-existed centuries before what are you left with? Um, not much. In fact, nothing at all.
If Jesus was so important, why don't we know more about him? The only records we have of him are in the Bible and a reference in Josephus. Yet, we now know that the reference in Josephus was a forgery. It was added by a monk a very long time later.
I'm not saying Jesus never existed. I don't know; I suspect he did, but I'm not sure. To me, however, it's obvious that he's not what we were told in the Bible.
So, where did all this mythmaking come from? I have read enough to be convinced that it was Paul - for many reasons. Paul was from Tarsus, which was a seat of the Mithras cult. Eating bread and drinking wine in a ritual meal was also part of the Mithras cult/Greek Mystery Religions. We know that I Corinthians (an authentic Pauline letter) was written before the gospel stories, so guess who made that up? You guessed it: Paul. Also, remember, since drinking blood or eating food with blood in it was forbidden to Jews, Jesus NEVER would have said, "This is my blood." I quote Hyam Maccoby (who, obviously, is Jewish):
“This is not to say, of course, that Jesus did not distribute bread and wine to his disciples at the Last Supper. This was quite normal at a Jewish meal... The leading person at the table would make a blessing (blessing is the original meaning of the word Eucharist) and then break the loaf of bread and pass a piece to everyone at the table. Then at the end of the meal, grace would be said over a cup of wine, which would be handed around at the end of grace... This procedure, which is still practiced today at Jewish tables had no mystical significance; the only meaning of it is to thank God for the meal He has provided. The addition of mystery religion trappings (i.e. the bread as the body of the god and the wine as his blood) was the work of Paul, by which he turned an ordinary Jewish meal into a pagan sacrament. Since the blood of an animal was forbidden at a Jewish meal by biblical law (Leviticus 7:26) the idea regarding the wine as blood would be found disgusting by Jews.” The Mythmaker pgs 115-116
Sometimes I wonder why I even post this stuff. After all, those that know this stuff don't need me "preaching to the choir" and those that want to believe in Santa Claus still will. I get tired of people telling me I've been deceived by "logical sounding lies" when they haven't read anything about church history and the origins of christianity. But if I can convince one person to look at the house of cards christianity is built on and rationally examine their beliefs by looking at the cold, hard facts, it will be worth it. This is shocking; heck, I know. It's as shocking to the modern day christian as Gallileo's heliocentric model of the universe was to those who lived in the 16th and 17th centuries. Yet, Gallileo was the one that was right. Experts say that mainstream christianity has only one or two more generations left. I hope so. When one wakes up from this myth, one feels as silly as if they were 21 years old and still believed in Santa Claus.
Merry Mithras, Happy Holy Days (whatever you chose to celebrate) but please try and keep the myth in Christmyth.
5 comments:
You know my thoughts on the subject in general. :)
There is one thing that I wish more Christians were aware of. Jesus was not born in December. He was most likely born in the spring sometime, as evidenced by the shepherds being out in the fields and whenever a census was ordered it was generally done in the spring. Jewish shepherds didn't spend the night in the fields in the winter.
December 25th was chosen at some point by the Catholic church. It's the date of a pagan festival and the church wanted to try and decrease its significance. So they proclaimed that Jesus was born on December 25th. Unfortunately most Christians don't know that and I always laugh at those who try to defend December 25th as Jesus's true date of birth.
With regards to the records being different in Luke and Matthew, current scholars believe that Luke is Mary's ancestry, but Joseph's name was used to make it more believable to the Gentiles. He would have been Heli's son-in-law. Other cultures at the time did not give the prominence to women that the Jewish culture did. Jewish women had far more rights than most others at the time.
Once you get to David, the lineages are exactly the same. Joseph was descended from Solomon, and Mary from one of David's other sons, Nathan. It was prophesied in the Old Testament that Jesus would be of royal lineage from the line of David. He's doubly royal. Ruth, Rahab and Bathsheba are also in his lineage.
Just because the deaths of the babies under 2 isn't recorded in Roman sources doesn't mean it didn't happen. It would not have been out of character for Herod the Great to have ordered that. He murdered members of his own family, including some sons and a couple of wives. He was the second Herod, the first being Herod Antipater. He also massacred a bunch of rabbis and priests.
Mark was written at the same time as 1 Corinthians, and John was written by the apostle John. It was the last of the gospels to be written, but he had very little contact with Paul and wouldn't have seen any of Paul's letters since he wasn't involved with those churches.
Satan is a great copier of God's work. I don't doubt that the other legends exist. The idea that Satan would go back in time to do so is preposterous. That is ridiculous and anybody who believes that oughta have their head examined! But he knew God's Son was coming and knew how He was coming. It wouldn't have been hard at all for the Great Deceiver to inspire the legends to confuse people later on.
Jewish people also knew the great significance of blood. It was only the blood offerings that could cleanse their sins. I imagine there was probably quite an uproar over the Lord's Supper. But at the same time those who chose to open their ears and listen would not have missed the significance of the words. Jesus's arrival signified the fulfillment of the sacrifice system and the abolishment of the old covenant.
Modern Jewish interpretations of their own history tend to ignore the importance of the sacrifices and the symbolism surrounding them. That's epidemic with any history though, people refusing to look at it through the eyes of the people at the time, and instead transposing modern thought patterns into historical text. But you know that's one of my big beefs with modern historians!
Mainstream Christianity probably does only have 1 or 2 generations left. But not because people are "waking up" to it being false, but because God said it would happen and it would usher in the end times.
I also find it curious that so many legends do resemble each other. The logical conclusion is that they are all inspired by the same information. Which Satan knew just as well as God did. He just didn't know the exact time when it would all happen.
Josephus WHY do people and more importantly scholars quote him or give him any credance, if ther is one account of events it can and should never be used as a benchmark for things that happened that would be like someone 2000 years from now finding a copy of mien kampf and thinking it was like that as for the jesus tales all you have to know about them is this ......... were did the jews come from Egypt so would they not bring their gods with them ( if you beieve the exodus part that is ) the ankh is just a looped cross the egyptian god tales morphed into the christian tales mary is just a morph of a local godess the list goes on and on ill stop now but ,,,,,,,,,,, great post heather :)
Rachel,
We really don't know who wrote the gospels, church tradition just attributed them to the authors Matthew, Mark, Luke & John. One thing for certain, Paul's undisputed letters pre-dated *all* the gospels, I Corinthians being one of them. It was written circa 55 C.E. It was written approximately 10 to 15 years before Mark (the earliest gospel) and 30 years before Matthew. John was the last, around 90ish C.E. None of the writers were eye-witnesses to Jesus' life. It wouldn't surprise me if they had Paul's letters in front of them as they wrote down their stories of Jesus.
Yes, Jesus' birthday may have been in the spring, but since Mithras was also attended to by shepherds, I'm skeptical of even that. I don't care about the dates and merging symbols - if christianity didn't claim it was historically accurate.
Yes, it was the church that set that date for the birth of Jesus based on the winter solstice and "re-birth" of the sun. You can thank Constantine for that. He was no christian, but a life-long member of the sol invictus/Mithas cult. His mother, Helena was the christian. He only made christianity the state religion for pragmatic reasons; not because he believed.
Herod was a tyrant and, yes, he did murder members of his own family. A joke at the time said it was safer to be Herod's pig than a family member. That's what makes the story so believable was his reputation. But, if the massacre happened, we *should* know about it from other sources. It's kind of like I would believe something bad about President Bush because I don't really care for him. It's the filter I see the story through. Same with the story of the massacre of the children. People would have believed it because of the killings he did do.
No, the geneologies do not match up. Matthew dropped three generations in his list. We know from I Chronicles 3:10-12 that Joram was the great-grandfather of Uzziah, but Matthew claims he was Uzziah's father. He did that so he could fit his 14 generations in.
Yes, it would appear that Jesus was of royal blood. Messiah should be translated as an earthly king, not spiritual. The Jews were right in anticipating that.
Jesus was first and foremost a Jew - and very likely a Pharisee, or a rabbi. Eating and drinking the body and blood of the dead god was a mystery religion practice, something Paul knew very well, coming from such a hotbed of the Mithras cult as Tarsus. Such a mystery religions practice would have been abhorent to Jesus. Paul was trying to make the Greek mystery religions accepable to the Jews.
If you find mythology and the "world's mono-myth" fascinating, you MUST read Joseph Campbell's "The Hero With A Thousand Faces." As an aspiring writer, it's required reading. You really can't be a writer without reading that book. I'm not exaggerating.
Be careful of saying Maccoby, a modern Jewish scholar, is looking at Jewish history through modern eyes. Read him first (if you can get a hold of his books, he died a few years ago and his books are out of print now). You may be right, but read him first. I think he hit the nail on the head on a lot of issues relating to Jesus and Paul.
I also agree that it's very sad how ignorant most christians are about the history of their faith. Most of what I know, I've only learned in the last few years. My point of the post was that, in my opinion, there is no way that only one of those stories is historically true, and the others simply myth. Frankly, I think the story is more powerful as myth.
The good thing is we are discussing it.
David, I'm very skeptical of Josephus, too. However, I've seen some documentaries where they've said that other than the tampering with adding the references to Jesus later on, he was apparently fairly accurate. Yet, because of the tampering, I take what he says (or what he's reported to have said) with a grain of salt.
Anything that only comes from one resource should not be taken as gospel. That's the first rule of research, and something many historians and fiction writers ignore. To their detriment IMO.
Everything Jesus did upset the natural order of things and outraged the people around Him. At church we just finished going through the book The Prodigal God by Tim Keller. It's about the parable of the prodigal son. The way we view it is entirely wrong.
That parable would have outraged every single person who heard it. And that was it's purpose. Most people are familiar with the story so I won't recap it here. The actions of *both* sons were intolerable at that time and would have gotten them both disowned.
Jesus was not a Pharisee. Everything He said and did was the exact opposite of what the Pharisees believed. Paul was a Pharisee, and a very good one at that. He was on the fast track to being ruler of the Sanhedrin and some scholars think that by the time he was 24 he had the equivalent of 3 Ph.D's. That's a pretty smart man. He sat under the teaching of some of the most respected rabbis in Jewish history.
The Lord's Supper is outrageous from the Jewish perspective. But at the same time it's also the fulfillment of the old covenant sacrifice. It is only through the shedding of blood that sin can be washed away. The Pharisees were addicted to their version of how things should be ordered. Jesus represented a HUGE threat to them and their order and their control of Jewish society.
Jesus allowing women to sit at his feet was an outrage, eating with tax collectors and prostitutes was an outrage, saying that the Jews should pay their taxes to Caesar was an outrage. He came to upset the balance of things and save people from themselves. Which He did, even from a pure historical standpoint.
There are lots of things in ancient history that we don't know about. Most of our knowledge of ancient Egypt is one-sided, especially the period when the pyramids were built. The pharaohs at that time did not record their defeats and if anyone wrote it down they were killed and the record destroyed.
Same principle applies for much of Southern history, especially the regions burned by the Yankees. Just because the hard records aren't there doesn't mean the marriages and births and deaths didn't happen. Just because the North denied many of the atrocities they committed against women and children doesn't mean it didn't happen.
What translation of the Bible are you most familiar with, Heather? I've never asked that. If it's the NIV, get thee to another translation! That one is so full of errors and politically correct drivel that it's ridiculous. The NKJV and the New Living Translation are considered the most accurate. I use the NLT and love it.
Rachel, I'm pretty convinced that Paul was no Pharisee. He was definitely hellenized. That being said, we now know that there were three people who wrote Paul's letters and only some of them that are attributed to him were actually written by him. I may need to go back and re-read some books, as Hyam Maccoby who wrote "The Mythmaker" may not have known that.
Jesus' teachings actually *were* consistent with Pharisaic teachings/philosophy. They believed in natural law, and that it was all right to break a few rules if there was threat of death. The words "scribes and Pharisees" was mistranslated. I can't urge you strongly enough to read "The Mythmaker" by Maccoby. (You should be able to get a cheap copy on ebay) You may not agree with everything he says, but he puts forward some very convincing arguments that it was Jesus who was the Pharisee and not Paul.
For example, Jesus saying that "the sabbath was made for man" was actually Pharisaic doctrine. Therefore, when the gospel of Mark claims (3:6) that the Pharisees who upheld that doctrine started plotting with the partisans of Herod to do away with Jesus for doing something they agreed with just doesn't make sense. In fact, the two groups hated each other so much that there was no they could ever form an alliance. The Sadducees (partisans of Herod) were nothing but Roman quislings interested in power and maintaining order.
Interesting that you would say that about research. I think you made my point about Herod, since it isn't recorded anywhere else, nor is the census Augustus is claimed to have ordered.
Yes, you're right. Jesus saying "pay to Caesar what is Caesar's" was an outrage. I suspect he may not have said that, and that those words were put in his mouth later on. Ever notice that the Romans never come under any fire for any of the things they did, but the Jews do? Even Pilate is made out to be a good guy and he wasn't. I suspect a lot of the New Testament was Roman propaganda in order to keep the Jews in line.
We have a Living Bible, a KJV and a Good News Bible in the house. The Good News one is sentimental as it was a gift from the school for grade 7 graduation. I don't have an NIV one anymore. I've heard that accusation against that translation before. The pastor that married us studied in Chicago under one of the translators, and had reason to question how he would translate some words (I don't remember why now; that was a long time ago).
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