Pagan influences on the biblical stories of Jesus' life

[The Atheist]

The burden of proof lies with the one making the positive assertion. Since there's no credible evidence to suggest this hypothesis, professional scholars reject it.

Perhaps you need to broaden the spectrum of "scholars" you rely upon?

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily...neighbors/

An even more common motif featured in early Christian art that draws directly from pagan funerary art is that of the Good Shepherd. Commonly represented as a young, beardless man holding a sheep across his shoulders, we see this representation in pagan funerary contexts long before the advent of Christianity. Initially, this image seems to have an association with the pagan god Hermes, who was the patron deity of shepherds and who would accompany the souls of the deceased into Hades. Eventually, however, the image seems to have developed into a symbol of care and comfort in the afterlife. In antiquity, this widely disseminated image was an ideal candidate for artistic syncretism. The Gospels’ story of Christ as the Good Shepherd (John 10:1–9) and similar parables that make allegorical reference to the image of a benevolent and protective shepherd (Luke 15:3–7; Matthew 18:12–13) was an excellent fit for an image that was already known, used and associated with divine protectiveness.

The use by the Christians of pagan sacred imagery is not necessarily confined solely to the Greco-Roman world. The cultural and religious syncretism that took place in Greek and Roman society with other, even older civilizations meant that many early Christians had a wealth of artistic examples that may have originated outside of their immediate cultural landscape. One example is an Egyptian artistic motif: Scholars have long hypothesized that the image of Mary nursing or holding the Christ child close to her breast is an iconographic image borrowed from the ancient Egyptian motif of the goddess Isis nursing the infant Horus.

Did you eveb read the article you linked to? It's about the pagan influence on Christian art.

[Panatheist]

Perhaps you need to broaden the spectrum of "scholars" you rely upon?

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily...neighbors/

Did you eveb read the article you linked to? It's about the pagan influence on Christian art.

Yes and there are also factual errors in the link posted above on early Christian history in regard to some of this mythology.  That is why I am skeptical of much of these claims.  I do think Christianity might have doctrinal influences from Greek mystery religions.  As to the sacraments there are more likely explanations for the origins of baptism and the Eucharist in Jewish customs even if some interpretative overlays came from other traditions.

[Minimalist]

Perhaps you need to broaden the spectrum of "scholars" you rely upon?

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily...neighbors/

Did you eveb read the article you linked to? It's about the pagan influence on Christian art.

Yes, and what? You think art is separate from the theological bullshit that you seem oddly attached to for an "atheist."  Art was vital.  Few could read but everyone could look at a picture.

Try to wise up.

[Silver]

What was artful is no different than what was too full of words. In the end, it is all based on nothing more than man's opinion.

[Fake Messiah]

Pagan influence? I think bigger question is if there was any new concept that was brought by Jesus or Bible altogether? Really! From the very beginning, the creation story, is just plagiarism of Egyptian creation myth - or should I say re-make of it by turning a creation done by 8 gods into creation story done by 1 god. Or notion of the soul.
Or Jesus and his resurrection. There were many myths like that before like goddess of the harvest, Demeter, who searched for her daughter every year in the land of the dead and when ever she left nature died, but when she found her daughter she returned and nature came to life again.
Even the symbols of Demeter, which are grapes and ear of wheat, were later used (and still are) by christian and especially Catholic priests.

Or virginal birth. You had Athens who was a goddess but also a virgin because that was the only way men could respect a woman in those times, since by refusing dick she was considered under no influence of any man, but only her own. If she got fucked she was under him. So no wonder when you read the four gospels the only one in which the virgin birth appears is the Gospel According to Luke, and Luke was a Greek.

But since Bible contradicts itself so much and/or people create false legends about stories in it you have people worshiping "Virgin Mary" although in the NZ it is mentioned that Joseph had sex with her, although after Jesus was born. Not to mention that she didn't consider him messiah or God and Bible clearly states that she wanted to put him in one of those ancient places for mentally ill people which contradicts the notion that she was visited by an angel telling her she'll give birth to God.

[Minimalist]

Far more likely to be from Sumerian sources rather than Egyptian.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/com_geba.htm

Creation stories from the ancient Middle East:
Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld y de la Torre writes that one of his articles:

"... is an attempt to briefly identify some of the Ancient Near Eastern Motifs and Myths from which the Hebrews apparently borrowed, adapted, and reworked in the Book of Genesis (more specifically Genesis 1-11).

It is my understanding that Genesis' motifs and characters, God, Adam, Eve, the Serpent, and Noah, are adaptations and transformations of characters and events occurring in earlier Near Eastern Myths. In some cases several characters and motifs from different myths have been brought together and amalgamated into Genesis' stories. 2

[Fake Messiah]

Far more likely to be from Sumerian sources rather than Egyptian.

Well think some more, would ya? Genesis 1–11 presents an insight into how the Bible evolved from a collection of polytheistic myths and from various cultures into almost a coherent monotheistic account.
And while Noah story is mostly taken from "Gilgamesh" you must also remember that Egyptians also believed there was a world-wide flood named as the Nun or Nu.

The Hebrew philosophers looked at the Egyptian deities and identified what aspect of nature a particular god or goddess represented. Then, taking the order in which these deities appeared, the early Hebrew scribes separated the deity from the phenomena represented by the deity, and described the same sequence of natural events solely in terms of natural phenomena. Where the Egyptians, for example, had Atum appear as a flaming serpent on a mountain emerging out of the Nun, the Hebrews simply talked about light appearing while a firmament arose out of a primeval flood.

Then Israel moved into Canaan, Hebrew writers were exposed to new traditions from Babylon. The Hebrews further rewrote their earlier ideas, which by this time had become divorced from the original Egyptian roots. The Hebrews encountered a new worldwide flood myth that occurred in the tenth generation of humanity rather than at the beginning of time like Egyptian.

Bible Creation story begins with the odd introduction that the story is about the children of heaven and earth, clearly a reference to pagan deities. In that myth, heaven and earth are the Egyptian deities Geb and Nut, and the biblical authors replaced them with Adam and Eve.There are numerous parallels between the myths about Geb and Nut and their biblical counterparts.

Initially, events in the Garden of Eden were about the children of Geb and Nut and the conflicts among them. The Garden of Eden lay along the Nile. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life were derived from symbols associated with the Egyptian deities Shu and Tefnut.
The sons of Adam and Eve—Cain, Abel, and Seth—corresponded to the sons of Geb and Nut—Osiris, Set, and Horus. The feuds between the family of Adam and the serpent, and the feud between Cain and Abel were based on the feuds between the family of Osiris and the serpentine Set.

In the story of Cain and Abel, for instance, Cain, a planter, killed his younger brother Abel, a shepherd. In the original Egyptian story, the younger brother killed the older brother, who was also a planter. The roles somehow became reversed. In Babylonian myths, however, we find stories about feuds between planters and shepherds and the tragic death of a shepherd.
Even geography changed. Where Eden once lay along the coasts of the Nile, biblical redactors clumsily removed it to Mesopotamia, confusing it with the Sumerian paradise of Dilmun.  

Take Gen. 1:1–2, for instance:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

The opening verses describe four things:
1. an earth and heaven that took up space but had had no form or content;
2. darkness;
3. a watery deep,within which the unformed space existed; and
4. a wind (i.e.,"Spirit of God") hovering upon the face of the waters.

They correspond precisely with what Egyptian deities and the elements they represented:

1. Huh and Hauhet—unformed space, i.e., the shapeless bubble within the deep, as described in Genesis as tohu and bohu;
2. Kuk and Kauket—the darkness on the face of the waters;
3. Nun and Naunet—the primeval flood, "the Deep," the same as the biblical deep;
4. Amen and Amenet—the invisible wind, the biblical "wind" that hovered over the deep.

Genesis author of this Creation story accepted the Theban (Egyptian) tradition that the primary Creator was identified with the wind. They simply changed the Egyptian god’s name of Amen to the Hebrew name of Elohim, and described him as the wind.

[Minimalist]

Then Israel moved into Canaan

No.  "Israel" and "Judah" developed separately in Canaan, at the beginning of the Iron Age c 1200 BC.  You have to lose the whole exodus horseshit.  None of it happened.  They began as Canaanites and the archaeological evidence is that they were still Canaanites when the Babylonians came rolling in.  Whether they were pastoralist nomads who settled down (Finkelstein) or refugees from the Sea People assaults (Dever) or some combination of both they were not a coherent foreign force invading the land from somewhere else.  That is simply later propaganda as is the rest of the OT.

By the time judaism was invented in the Persian period Egypt was a much-conquered shell of its former glory.  They had been overrun by Libyans, Nubians, and Assyrians, barely held off the Babylonians before the Persians walked in and kicked the shit out of them.  It was the Zoroastrian Persians who introduced monotheism (Ahura Mazda) to the world... not the fucking "jews" who were an insignificant ink stain on the map at the time.

[Godscreated]

You all are arguing from two different starting points, this will always bring disagreement. The biggest disparity is Genesis and evolution. You all should first agree on the starting point and go from there.

GC

[Redbeard The Pink]

There's a youtuber named Aron Ra that talks a lot about the connections, influences, and developments between Judaism/Christianity and other cultures. I know they borrowed the idea of Satan from the Persians, and supposedly Yahweh had a wife named Ashrah or something like that at one point or another before she got deleted from his continuity.


Richard Carrier is a good source concerning the connections between Christianity and some of the mystery cults from that age. He notes a repurposing of dying-and-rising gods from seasonal, agricultural symbols to personal saviors, along with a few other trends that are present in Christianity.


There are some Egyptian stories that describe Isis as giving a virgin birth, but there are other versions of that story that involve a detached, golden penis, so I'm not sure how much that had to do with Jesus. Probably not much.