Christianity and Mythology

[cbish]

One criticism I've heard against Christianity and the bible is that it is a poorly written, plagerized version of many different older religions/mythologies.

I saw a post recently (I can't recall by whom or which thread) that compared Christianity with Egyptian mythology. They took characters and events from the bible and matched them against the characters and events from ancient Egypt.

My question is to any of you who know more about this than I do: What are some other religions/mythologies that have biblical parallels and what are they?

(footnote: I'm not interested in the accuracy of the stories or the validity of the connections):cool:

[Jet Grind]

Yeah, Greco-Egyptian Mysticism has had great influence upon Christianity. The virgin-birth, ressurection, and miracles of Jesus all came from Gods in it's pantheon. Another of Christianity's cheif sources is Zoaroatrian Dualism (the Christian "Satan" is and adaptation of the Zoaroatrian "Ahirman"). There is also a little Platonism (The idea that our carnal nature is separate from our "spiritual" nature) and pre-agriculture paganism (which is where almost all of it's holidays come from).

[triadboy]

Originally posted by cbish
My question is to any of you who know more about this than I do: What are some other religions/mythologies that have biblical parallels and what are they?


Horus (Egyptian)

The stories of Horus are amazingly similar to Jesus. These stores date to ~3000 years before Jesus. Here are just a few similarities:

- Horus is the Father seen in the Son
- Horus was the way, the truth, the life by name and in person.
- Horus baptized with the water by Anup = Jesus baptized with water by John
- Horus, born in Annu, the place of bread = Jesus born in Bethlehem, the house of bread
- Horus the Good Shepherd with the crook upon his shoulders = Jesus the Good Shepherd with the lamb upon his shoulder
- The Seven on board the boat with Horus = The seven fishers on board the boat with Jesus
- Horus as the Lamb = Jesus as the Lamb
- Horus identified with the Tat or Cross = Jesus identified with the Cross
- Horus of twelve years = Jesus of twelve years
- Horus the manifesting Son of God = Jesus the manifesting Son of God
- The trinity of Atum the Father, Horus the Son and Ra the Holy Spirit = the trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
- Horus the Morning Star = Jesus the Morning Star

Virishna (East 1200 BC)

- Immaculately conceived and born of a spotless virgin "who had never know man"
- The agent of his conception was a Holy Ghost
- Threatened in early infancy with death by the ruling tyrant, Cansa
- Parents fled with him to Gokul for safety
- All young male children under two years of age were slain by an order issued by Cansa.
- Angels and shepherd attended his birth
- Birth occurred in accordance with previous prophecy
- He was presented at birth with Frankincense , myrrh, and gold
- He was saluted and worshipped as "the Savior of Men"
- He caused astounding miracles such as, healing the sick, restoring sight to the blind, casting out devils, raising the dead, etc.
- He was finally put to death upon the cross between two thieves
- After which he decended to hell, rose from the dead and ascended back to heaven "in the sight of all men"

The Ancient Chinese God, Beddou (1027BC) has a remarkably similar life.

Mithraism is a mystery religion very similar to the Jesus story

Here is a partial list of gods who have decended from heaven and clothed themselves with human flesh - their stories are also similar:

Chrishna
Buddha
Salivahana
Zulis
Osiris
Odin
Crite
Zoroaster
Baal
Indra
Bali
Jao
Wittoba
Thammuz
Atys
Xamolxis
Zoar
Adad
Deva
Alcides
Mikado
Beddru
Hesus
Thor
Cadmus
Hil
Quexalcote
Adonis
Prometheus
Mohamud
Mithra
-

[cbish]

Excellent posts, thanks:D

I do want to retract the last part of my first post where I said I was not interested in discussing the validity of the connections. We can do that if it's kept on an academic level. I just didn't want the thread to get hijacked and degraded by emotional discussion.

[Frostbite]

Check out also the Sumerian texts like the Enuma Elish, the story of Gilgamesh and Adapa. More here:

http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/

[TheERK]

triadboy,

Although I believe Christianity is heavily based on pre-Christian religions, your post has some questionable information. Acharya S, which is where I'm assuming you got that information, had no references to the 'Horus' information that you quoted, when asked.

Although I'm willing to believe the deity Horus may have influenced Christianity, I wouldn't take the exaggerations and unsupported claims of Acharya S too seriously. There are authors out there who can show the parallels quite clearly without stooping to her level of disinformation.

[Dancing David]

Flood mythologies are very common as well, almost all cultures have a variation on the flood myth.

Part of the reason for Christianity imitating other religions is deliberate.

December 25 is Mithras day
Easter is a Roman goddess.

[cbish]

Yes, I heard that actually many of the Christian holidays are at the time of year because they matched the religious holiday's of the northern europeans whom they were either trying to convert or out compete.

[Gideon S]

Wasn't that James Frazer and Joseph Campbell's entire schtick? I love the parallels that world mythologies have with each other.

A lot of the New Testament teachings are particularly eastern in flavor, if not downright gnostic. Somewhere I have a paper comparing Christ's teachings to Buddha, and pretty much the only real difference (aside from doctrinal, which is another subject entirely) is that Buddhists don't proselytize.

Originally posted by cbish
Yes, I heard that actually many of the Christian holidays are at the time of year because they matched the religious holiday's of the northern europeans whom they were either trying to convert or out compete.

I believe (someone will correct me if I'm wrong) that what happened is Christian missionaries moved north converting the "pagans", and would tell them to keep their sacred places, rituals and holidays, but to know that those places were consecrated in the name of Christ. After a generation or two, they were all indoctrinated in Christianity. Pagan gods became saints, and since a lot of the rituals bore similarity (drink of the symbolic blood, eat of the symbolic body, etc) the conversion process wasn't that difficult.

At the very least it worked out better than the crusades.

[Lord Emsworth]

Originally posted by Dancing David
Easter is a Roman goddess.

Are you sure?

Easter (in German Ostern) is named after Ostara (http://www.wiccan.com/ostara.html)
Ostara … is the Norse Goddess of fertility

[Blue Monk]

The Golden rule is attributed to Confucius in a slightly different form. In his version he said, (and I’m paraphrasing) “Don’t do to others what you would not want done to you.” Jesus seems to have made it less passive by say “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Also some believe that it was the Persians that introduced the Devil concept. The personification of evil in the form of the Devil was a common Persian belief and seems to appear in biblical literature at a time when they were dominant in the area according to Asimov.

[Dancing David]

I couldn't find any scholarly site but I found some that said she is the Roman diety Eos, and here I always figured it was a corubtion of Astarte or Ishtar.

[Cleopatra]

Originally posted by Gideon S
Wasn't that James Frazer and Joseph Campbell's entire schtick? I love the parallels that world mythologies have with each other.

.

Yeap.

cbish
You can find Fraser's famous book " The Golden Bough" on line too, in barthleby.com , I think.

It's an excellent reading, not very easy but it worths the pain to devote time to read this book. You will find many interesting things in there regarding the topic, of course.

[Lord Emsworth]

Originally posted by Dancing David
I couldn't find any scholarly site but I found some that said she is the Roman diety Eos, and here I always figured it was a corubtion of Astarte or Ishtar.

Yes and no. When I search for Eos most of the sites say Eos is Greek. Which is then often held to be the same as the Roman Aurora and the Whatever Ostara.

I suppose accuracy is only wishful thinking here

[cbish]

Cleopatra,

Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out. I don't mind painful reading. I just finished Moby Dick!;)

[Cleopatra]

Accoring to the Penguin Dictionary of Classical Mythlogy, Eos is Greek of course, and a she person.
She is the personification of Dawn...so the roman equivalent is Aurora, indeed.

[Cleopatra]

Originally posted by cbish
Cleopatra,

I just finished Moby Dick!;)

You did WHAT????:eek:

bows humbly

I have tried soooo hard to read it ... I have failed so far :(

[Loki]

cbish,

A small but fairly well documented "overlap" is the Moses = Sargon theory. Even if Moses was real, it appears that his biographers decided to "borrow" a few details from the earlier story of Sargon 1, King of Babylon.

More info here (http://www.coas.drexel.edu/humanities/faculty/thury/Rank2.html)

Oh, and like theERK says, the simple lists of "jesus attributes" derived from other gods that you find scattered around the internet have been discussed here before, and most of it is fairly weak scholarship. Take it with a grain of salt.

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth


Yes and no. When I search for Eos most of the sites say Eos is Greek. Which is then often held to be the same as the Roman Aurora and the Whatever Ostara.

I suppose accuracy is only wishful thinking here

Yeah , weel , um sorry.

I was just repeating something my Italian professor said , until you called me on it I never checked.

[triadboy]

Originally posted by TheERK
triadboy,

Although I believe Christianity is heavily based on pre-Christian religions, your post has some questionable information. Acharya S, which is where I'm assuming you got that information, had no references to the 'Horus' information that you quoted, when asked.

Although I'm willing to believe the deity Horus may have influenced Christianity, I wouldn't take the exaggerations and unsupported claims of Acharya S too seriously. There are authors out there who can show the parallels quite clearly without stooping to her level of disinformation.

I got my info from an essay by Albert Churchward (1924)

[LW]

Originally posted by triadboy


I got my info from an essay by Albert Churchward (1924)

Could you give a little more complete citation information that would include also the name of the essay, publication information, and, if possible, a link for an online version.

[LW]

Originally posted by TheERK

Although I believe Christianity is heavily based on pre-Christian religions, your post has some questionable information. Acharya S, which is where I'm assuming you got that information, had no references to the 'Horus' information that you quoted, when asked.

Googling for "Horus" and "virgin" I found a link to a page with excerps from Acharya S.'s "The Christ Conspiracy". One bullet item there made me want to bang my head on wall:


o Horus was born of the virgin Isis-Meri ...


Virgin? Virgin? Virgin? All Egyptian myths that I'm aware of are pretty explicit in that Isis had physical sex with Osiris after his death.

[Martin]

Wasn't Osiris chopped into bits after his death? Or am I mixing up my mythologies again? I thought Isis just got hold of the relevant bit and made use of it, as it were.

[LW]

Originally posted by Martinm
Wasn't Osiris chopped into bits after his death? Or am I mixing up my mythologies again? I thought Isis just got hold of the relevant bit and made use of it, as it were.

Set first sealed him in a sargophagus and threw him into Nile. Isis found it, and the sex bit happened then. When Set heard of the situation he came and chopped Osiris into bits. Isis and Nephtys then fished out the bits from Nile.

[SFB]

Originally posted by TheERK
triadboy,

There are authors out there who can show the parallels quite clearly without stooping to her level of disinformation.

TheErk:

Please do tell the names of these authors. Going through Amazon reviews of her book is tedious (for the most part).

BTW, have you read Earl Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle? If so, whaddaya think?

[Martin]

Originally posted by LW
Set first sealed him in a sargophagus and threw him into Nile. Isis found it, and the sex bit happened then. When Set heard of the situation he came and chopped Osiris into bits. Isis and Nephtys then fished out the bits from NileThanks for clearing that up.

I Googled for 'Albert Churchward' - I think the publication triadboy was referring to would probably be The Origin and Evolution of Religion.

[Preston]

Here's (http://www.medmalexperts.com/POCM/getting_started_pocm.html) a site I ran into awhile back that shows parallels between Christianity and other "Pagan" religions

[Globert]

I favor the beer gods (http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IS/CIVIL/NN_FAL91/NN_Fal91.html) but the Plagerists left them out.

[KS_SKEPTIC]

Originally posted by cbish
One criticism I've heard against Christianity and the bible is that it is a poorly written, plagerized version of many different older religions/mythologies.

I saw a post recently (I can't recall by whom or which thread) that compared Christianity with Egyptian mythology. They took characters and events from the bible and matched them against the characters and events from ancient Egypt.

My question is to any of you who know more about this than I do: What are some other religions/mythologies that have biblical parallels and what are they?

(footnote: I'm not interested in the accuracy of the stories or the validity of the connections):cool:

Is this the post your talking about:
http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20406&highlight=Heros

I would question any Internet source with skepticism.
A lot of Internet sources are nothing but pseudoscience.
It is a good idea to always check out the sources.
Most of my sources comes from travel to the Middle East belong with a lot time spent watching the Discovery Channel, but mostly from many hours spent studying lots of books about Egyptology!!!
Here is a short list of some of the books I have in my personal library:
RIDDLES OF THE SPHINX by Paul Jordan
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MAGIC by Bob Brier
Egyptian Mummies by Bob Brier
EGYPT UNCOVERED by Vivian Davies & Renee Friedman (EGYPT UNCOVERED is also on video)
THE COMPLETE PYRAMIDS by Mark Lehner
CHRONICLE OF THE PHARAOHS by Peter A, Clayton
TOMBS TREASURES MUMMIES by Dennis C. Forbes
A LION HANDBOOK The World's Religions
The Egyrtion Book Of The Dead
Atlas of ANCIENT EGYPT by John Baines & Jaromir Malek
EGYPTIAN GODS AND GODDESSES by George Hart
I have a lot more books but not enough time to write them all down at this time.
I would also strongly suggest that you take a look at the magazine KMT a modern journal of ancient Egypt. This is a great magazine that has a great deal of information about ancient Egypt and the ancient Egyptian religion. It can be found in Barnes & Noble bookstores or on the Internet.
Good luck in your studies!!!
Thanks
Kansas Skeptic :cool:

[evildave]

Pterodactyls were flourescent pink.

More or less, discussing ancient gods is a bit like speculating on the color of dinosaurs. Or even reconstructing extinct species from the fragment of a jaw bone. It doesn't matter how "scholarly" the work is, if there isn't enough original material left, it's all conjecture.

Certainly it doesn't help matters that wave after wave of cultures historically destroyed and defaced and editorialized the religious practices and histories of past cultures. "Baby eatin' blood lickin' killers, the lot of 'em!"

As a simple model, we can use "Christianity". If all you had were rotten bits of Chick Tracts and Awake! pamphlets (lining a landfill), and perhaps some surviving scraps and bits of various versions of Bibles, what sort of conclusions might one draw about "Christianity", assuming it was a single religion, and not a lot of competing petty cults?

[EdipisReks]

Originally posted by Cleopatra


You did WHAT????:eek:

bows humbly

I have tried soooo hard to read it ... I have failed so far :(

what?!?! that book is fantastic. i read it for the first time in elementary school and i've read it half a dozen times since. of course, it helps that i'm fascinated by ships and nautical history in general, and have been since i was a small child ;)