Is Christianity based on older myths?

[YGninja]

In Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus" he makes this observation:

In Plutarch's biography of Romulus, the founder of Rome, we are told he was the son of god, born of a virgin; an attempt is made to kill him as a baby, and he is saved, and raised by a poor family, becoming a lowly
shepherd; then as a man he becomes beloved by the people, hailed as king, and killed by the conniving elite; then he rises from the dead, appears to a friend to tell the good news to his people, and ascends to heaven to rule from on high. Just like Jesus.

If anyone wants to read Plutarch to check up on Carrier it is available on line. Plutarch cites Diocles of Peparethus as his source and this man lived c 300 BC. You see, historians...unlike bible bullshitters....discuss their sources.

1:Got any actual quotes, or are you relying on interpretation?
2: Plutarch died almost 100 years after Christ, Christianity was well developed before he wrote the book.
3: Plutarch lives around 8-900 years after Romulus is claimed to have lived. Can we trust the source, even if you could show the claims are actually in there? Its hardly first hand evidence, now. Atheists like to jump on the issue that the first gospels were probably written some 30 years after Christs death, how much more skeptical should they be of a document written 8-900 years after?

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1: There aren't very significant similarities between Mithras/Osiris and Jesus
2: The Egyptian religion was enforced by the state, same with many other religions, while Christianity grew despite the state.
3: Jesus was a real person, there is practically no debate amongst scholars of antiquity. Even if we were to exclude the Biblical sources, there are many others such as Tacitus et al. This before we even try to explain the rapid rise of Christianity if there were no Christ.

Tacitus referred to Christians, not to Jesus.

The rapid rise of Christianity happened centuries after the alleged events.

Got anything else?

"Christus, the founder of the [Christian] name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius. But the
pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, by through the city of
Rome also." Tacitus Annals XV, 44, AD ~115. (Even this source demonstrates CHristianity had spread from Judea to Rome before the time of writing)
Tacitus was a Roman historian and senator, writing merely some 60-70 years after the event. Hardly likely he is mistaken

Christianity had reached Rome by about AD 50, and before AD 100 had established over 40 international bases.

"Many of these Early Christians were merchants and others who had practical reasons for traveling to northern Africa, Asia Minor, Arabia, Greece, and other places.[4][5][6] Over 40 such communities were established by the year 100,[5][6] many in Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor, such as the Seven Churches of Asia. By the end of the first century, Christianity had already spread to Rome, India, and major cities in Armenia, Greece and Syria, serving as foundations for the expansive spread of Christianity, eventually throughout the world."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_cente...anity#Rome

[pocaracas]

[i]"Christus, the founder of the [Christian] name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius. "

So wrote a roman, who got the tale from people who had contacted some christians... in Rome!

Still doesn't render Jesus real.

[YGninja]

So wrote a roman, who got the tale from people who had contacted some christians... in Rome!

Still doesn't render Jesus real.

So wrote a historian, and a senator, who opposed Christianity, who was never corrected by any other Roman, just 60-70 years after Christs death. You afraid to follow the evidence? Your idea that he got the 'tale' from some random people and not, for example, historical records, or even eye witnesses given the small time frame, is 100% ungrounded speculation. Why on earth would a Roman senator who opposed Christianity, take a Christians word from anything, above the Roman records, or above Roman eyewitnesses?

[Tonus]

According to Bhagavata Purana some believe that Krishna was born without a sexual union, by “mental transmission” from the mind of Vasudeva into the womb of Devaki, his mother.

No wonder the gods are so infatuated with regulating sex... they didn't know how to do it right!

[Nope]

Romans used cattle intestines to predict the future. Mystery religions were popular in Rome. It makes sense that a Roman would simply report what he was told. It has been awhile since I read that particular letter but I thought he was more confused how to react to Christians but wasn't necessarily against their faith.

[Chad32]

Well he wasn't totally with them. Which means he was against them. Obviously.

[Minimalist]

Leave it to a jesus freak to refuse to go read the source material provided and then trot out a forgery to back up his fucking godboy shit.

Blow me, asshole. If you can't use google to find Plutarch I'm not going to help you. I'm not your fucking secretary.

The examples I gave, Mithras and Osiris, were both mystery cults whereas Christianity was/is not.

Incorrect.

Notably all the mystery religions were products of the same sort of cultural syncretism. The Eleusinian mysteries were a syncretism of Levantine and Hellenistic elements; the mysteries of Attis and Cybele were a syncretism of Phrygian and Hellenistic elements; the mysteries of Jupiter Dolichenus were a syncretism of Anatolian and Hellenistic elements; Mithraism was a syncretism of Persian and Hellenistic elements; the mysteries of Isis and Osiris were a syncretism of Egyptian and Hellenistic elements. Christianity is simply a continuation of the same trend: a syncretism of Jewish and Hellenistic elements. Each of these cults is unique and different from all the others in nearly every detail-but it's the general features they all share in common that reflect the overall fad that produced them in the first place, the very features
that made them popular and successful within Greco-Roman culture.


Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, pg. 100

Same shit in a different bag, Chad. Sucks to be you.

[pocaracas]

Isn't he cute...?

So wrote a roman, who got the tale from people who had contacted some christians... in Rome!

Still doesn't render Jesus real.

So wrote a historian, and a senator, who opposed Christianity, who was never corrected by any other Roman, just 60-70 years after Christs death. You afraid to follow the evidence? Your idea that he got the 'tale' from some random people and not, for example, historical records, or even eye witnesses given the small time frame, is 100% ungrounded speculation. Why on earth would a Roman senator who opposed Christianity, take a Christians word from anything, above the Roman records, or above Roman eyewitnesses?

Watch this:
The idea that he got the 'tale' from eye witnesses is ungrounded speculation! boooya!!
Especially, given the large time frame (60+ years, you say?) and average life expectancy back then... oh and travel requirements.
I'm not saying no one did travel, but... come on... what are the odds that a person, at least in his teens, would witness the JC events, would live for some 60 years AND travel to Rome to tell the 'tale' to a senator who would then write about it?

You expect too much of people from way back then...
Most wouldn't venture more than 10~20 miles from their homes.
Average life expectancy was about 45.

Also, have you ever played a game we, around my place, call broken telephone? It's very educating about how a message can be degraded along a relatively small chain of transmission, if all the links are human.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Nah.

1: There aren't very significant similarities between Mithras/Osiris and Jesus

So? That there are some is enough to raise doubts, even without dissecting in totality the myths of both characters.

2: The Egyptian religion was enforced by the state, same with many other religions, while Christianity grew despite the state.

So? Relevance?

3: Jesus was a real person, there is practically no debate amongst scholars of antiquity.

Remains to be evidenced to a degree i'm willing to accept

Even if taken as given that Jesus was real, there's a long way to go following that to prove that this character was 'divine' or in any way supernatural. Again, no evidence has ever been presented to perusade me this is the case.

Even if we were to exclude the Biblical sources, there are many others such as Tacitus et al. This before we even try to explain the rapid rise of Christianity if there were no Christ.

There were no mentions of Jesus in any contemporary works during the time Jesus was supposedly alive and kicking. I'd expect someone so magical and supernatural to have at least warranted one contemporary reference to him whilst he was around.

The debate is effectively moot anyway because even if Jesus was the most evidenced person in the history of humanity, it wouldn't make a jot of difference to claims over his supernatural powers. The bar of evidence is set much, much higher for that.

[Mister Agenda]

Mithras, Osiris and the rest are just myths and were understood as such by their adherents.

That seems a stretch, and unknowable to boot. No doubt some adherents viewed their deities as mythical, just as some people in Christian pews and in front of them in America do today. The average person probably took the stories a little more literally, the way the average American Christian does today.

Jesus Christ, on the other hand, was a real person and the early Christians knew that.

'Believed that' is not synonymous with 'knew that'.

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You all make a logical fallacy by assuming that just because previous examples of something had X then all subsequent examples must also have X.

That seems rather imperceptive. Do you believe that is our position just because it's more convenient to your position if it is?

Just because the previous religions were false doesn't mean that Christianity is also.

That is correct. It just means Christianity isn't very orginal.

The pattern is broken.

No two stories are exactly like, but the pattern is similar. Especially if you consider more contemporary wandering philosopher/wonderworkers like Apollonius of Tyana and the Simon of the 'Gabriel Revelation' tablet.

The charge isn't that Christianity isn't true based on these similarities, it's that it isn't impressively unique, which is a frequent claim of Christian apologists.

The examples I gave, Mithras and Osiris, were both mystery cults whereas Christianity was/is not.

So? There were plenty of pagan religions that weren't mystery cults. I can think of some examples off the top of my head that were believed to be real people who really walked the earth and were considered actual gods after their death: Aesculapius (son of Apollo and a mortal woman), Heracles, Amenhotep (a healer), and Imhotep (another healer).