Is Easter based on a pagan tradition?

[A_Nony_Mouse]

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Are you suggesting that people would begin an annual celebration based on nothing at all? The Exodus was passed down orally, so it must have been pretty important to the Hebrews.

See Made in Alexandria in my sig and Made in Alexandria if you want to hassle me about it.

Once one realizes, comes to accept the obvious, that Exodus and Joshua are a myth one no longer has any Hebrews as a distinct group. Once it is recognized as myth then one realizes it was created at some point in time. Then the question becomes was the celebration imposed on the people after the invention of the myth or did is exist before and was adapted to fit the new myth.

As you refer to oral tradition you are already half way there as the idea of oral tradition was invented after people could no longer claim Moses wrote Exodus and not break out laughing at the claim.

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[Sweetest of smiles] well you do celebrate the resurrection of Christ, after all....

I'm waiting for a contemporary example of humans bearing this kind of psychology. Can you show that people actually act this way?

Contemporary? Assuming you are an American then you will recognize the inventions of Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Presidents Day, MLK Day and Labor Day. Frankly the more Latinos the better so we can have Cinco de Maio as a holiday.

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I have four historical accounts and scores of 1st-2nd century references. That's more than 99.9% of historical figures. You need to show why we should not trust these accounts. Provide a contemporary scenario in which entire events were fabricated and traditions resulted from them. A scenario that you can prove.

Ignoring for the moment there is no basis for claiming those four of the 46 gospels are historical I will point out in only two of them is there a claim the tomb was entered and found empty. The other two stories have some unknown character claiming it was empty. Do you not read your own mythology?

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I shan't go into an argument that you've surely already had ad nauseam with other forum members here. You have the Bible and and handful of references, none of which date to when your supposed messiah - not even the messiah my people spoke of, but a hastily patched up one to fit your own sniveling needs - was supposed to be around, leading to more hearsay.

Your "people"? Jews are followers of Judaism. An theist does not follow Judaism. An atheist cannot be a Jew.

Jewish people is essentially a 19th c. Zionist invention.

Speaking of a recent invention becoming an ancient belief. You have put your finger on a big one. For details see the following.

The Invention of the Jewish People [Paperback] Shlomo Sand (Author), Yael Lotan (Translator)

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Could you be more specific? Which Indian gurus? And were entire events fabricated? Did people respond with a change in lifestyle? The only case I see that matches that description is Mormonism, which arose out of warfare as much as it did Smith's words.

Without discussing your strange acceptance of only four of the 46 gospels and assuming they are what you claim they are the fact that it was new at some point shows people do in fact change based upon new events. Consider the people who changed based upon those four written by possibly known people who were of unknown character, unknown honesty and unknown integrity who wrote them for unknown reasons save perhaps for G. Luke.

There is nothing from that you can invoke to salvage Christianity that cannot be equally invoked to salvage Islam or Mormonism.

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Muhammad was a political leader who conquered lands. Most early followers were forcibly included. Dissenters, he killed: http://www.answering-islam.org/Authors/A..._poets.htm Islam, like all major religions, began out of action rather than hearsay.

IF one looks at the Koran and reads real history one discovers the convert or die did NOT apply to peoples of the book meaning Christians and Jews. There were Jewish generals leading Jewish armies in the spread of Islam. As most of their conquests were of Christians and as there is no historical record of forced conversions in the first few centuries the idea of spread by force is nonsense. There were some sporadic later and local attempts at forced conversion but the rulers of other areas forced them to stop it.

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Muhammad was a political leader who conquered lands.

That's the story they like to tell but the problem is that there is no contemporary evidence to that effect. IOW, the Byzantines and Persians did not seem to know who was "conquering" them. Somewhat odd wouldn't you say? There are occasional references in Byzantine literature to "Saracens" but this only refers to the people ( i.e. Arabs ) not to a religion. The term is first used by Ptolemy in Geographica, a second century work.

I might add that the only reason was succeeding was that the Byzantines and Persians had just called it a draw after a long series of expensive wars where they lost way too many of their combat age men to effectively resist.

As for the odd name Saracen consider the Hun of WWI. The war started against Austro-Hungarian empire. Draftees from Australia were brought to Europe to help fight the war so they couldn't call the bad guys Aussies. And besides, Huns had a nice ring from Atilla the Hun.

Sidebar: In 1924 Britain formally apologized for its WWI propaganda. There is still no apology for WWII propaganda even though the worst of it came from Stalin propaganda machine.