Jesusism - Just Another First Century Mystery Cult

[RoadRunner79]

This unwillingness to engage with, ad hominem, and distrust of anyone outside of their group, still reminds me of dealing with cultist groups.

However back to the argument being discussed.  I'm still looking for details on what exactly is being compared. 

The following is from https://historyforatheists.com/2017/05/d...ory-again/ under the category "Jesus was an amalgam of earlier pagan myths, brought together into a mythic figure of a god-man and saviour of a kind found in many cults of the time.”  This is referencing the writings of Acharya S, but I believe they are similar to what is being proposed here.   (Although those proposing them seem to avoid specifics and reasoning, in favor of discussing the person).

Working from late nineteenth and early twentieth century  theosophist claims which exaggerate parallels between the Jesus stories and pagan myths, she makes the typical New Age logical leap from “similarity” to “parallel” and finally to “connection” and “causation”.  Leaving aside the fact that many of these “parallels” are highly strained, with any miraculous conception or birth story becoming a “virgin birth” or anything to do with a death or a tree becoming a “crucifixion” (even if virginity or a cross is not involved in either), it is very hard to make the final leap from “parallel” to “causation”.

This goes along with what I have seen as well.  With the dying and rising gods  tied to the seasons becoming analogous to Christ's resurrection. The connection being so reduced and strained in order to make the connection, that it's meaning is lost.

Further, there is the issue, that history within the early Church, shows that the origin was primarily Jewish,

This is particularly hard because of the masses of evidence that the first followers of the Jesus sect were devout Jews – a group for whom the idea of adopting anything “pagan” would have been utterly horrific.  These were people who cut their hair short because long hair was associated with pagan, Hellenistic culture or who shunned gymnasia and theatres because of their association with pagan culture.  All the evidence actually shows that the earliest Jesus sect went through a tumultuous period in its first years trying to accommodate non-Jews into their devoutly Jewish group.  To claim that these people would merrily adopt myths of Horus and Attis and Dionysius and then amalgamate them into a story about a pagan/Jewish hybrid Messiah (who didn’t exist) and then turn around and forget he didn’t exist and claim he did and that he did so just a few decades earlier is clearly a nonsense hypothesis.

Now if applying the description of "mystery religion" to Christianity, was useful, I don't have an issue with it.  After all, this would just be a short way, of referring to certain aspects of Christianity.  However for the mythicists, it seems to be more ideological, rather than based on facts and rational reason.

[Minimalist]

"Jesus was an amalgam of earlier pagan myths, brought together into a mythic figure of a god-man and saviour of a kind found in many cults of the time.”  This is referencing the writings of Acharya S, but I believe they are similar to what is being proposed here.  

Why don't you read Carrier's book and put down that quack.  She's trumpeting the 1875 work of Kersey Graves.  If you keep saddling yourself with that kind of shit you'll never learn anything.  BTW, the same goes for turn of the century "archaeologists" who were really just preachers with a bible in one hand and a shovel in the other.  They went to the ANE to "prove" the bible and, voila!  Every stone they picked up was something that moses had pissed on.

Unlike religion, science progresses.  Learn to check sources.

[RoadRunner79]

"Jesus was an amalgam of earlier pagan myths, brought together into a mythic figure of a god-man and saviour of a kind found in many cults of the time.”  This is referencing the writings of Acharya S, but I believe they are similar to what is being proposed here.  

Why don't you read Carrier's book and put down that quack.  She's trumpeting the 1875 work of Kersey Graves.  If you keep saddling yourself with that kind of shit you'll never learn anything.  BTW, the same goes for turn of the century "archaeologists" who were really just preachers with a bible in one hand and a shovel in the other.  They went to the ANE to "prove" the bible and, voila!  Every stone they picked up was something that moses had pissed on.

Unlike religion, science progresses.  Learn to check sources.

How about you give me some insight, which would make me want to read/buy Carriers book.  
What is this new information (progress) that you think that I am ignoring?   What are specifics, that can be verified in this view, that is more than a strained and distorted comparison as those previous?  Give me something to work with here!

You seem to want to focus on the people, but what in this argument you are presenting (as vague as it may be) doesn't apply to what I had posted?

[Minimalist]

How many passages from it do I have to give you?  What you don't see are the extensive footnoting and bibliography that went into it.  This is not a gospel which pretends to be the word of god.  This is a serious, scholarly, study of stuff which, deep down, I suspect you do not want studied all that closely.

[RoadRunner79]

How many passages from it do I have to give you?  What you don't see are the extensive footnoting and bibliography that went into it.  This is not a gospel which pretends to be the word of god.  This is a serious, scholarly, study of stuff which, deep down, I suspect you do not want studied all that closely.

So... give me something to examine more closely!   I keep asking for this, you keeping avoiding it, which seems that it is something that you do not want studied more closely.
And I'm not asking you to copy the book, like some muppet... But lets discuss it.  What is a basic premise in this reasoning?  What are some facts that I can examine?

Although it would seem rather fitting, to just pre-assign Carrier to a type, that went before him, and dismiss him from that.  This would be the same type of reasoning that Carrier is using (which is bad reasoning).

[Minimalist]

Why can't you start with the passage in the OP?  I would think that would be sufficient to get your fire lit?

[JackRussell]

Trouble is reading stuff that discounts your preconceptions is difficult, but it's important if you want to be intellectually honest.

I am not including RR in this, but I have often been told that I obviously haven't read the bible or any stuff that is there to support it. But I have.

Again, not aiming this at RR, just other theists in my life.

It's disingenuous when they do.

[RoadRunner79]

Why can't you start with the passage in the OP?  I would think that would be sufficient to get your fire lit?

Oh... was that the whole arguement....  

[JackRussell]

Or maybe not.....

[RoadRunner79]

Sorry, but it seems you are hinging this connection / similarity argument on baptism for those entering the group, and restoration to eternal life.   I don't think you are going to be able to make a very strong correlation here.

Another criticism, along with the fact that mystery religions where not really found in Palestine at the time, is that there is a tendency among supporters of mysticism to collectionize the mystery religions and make them one. And then compare any point that is similar to Christianity. 

I am guessing this is much like a number of arguments for evolution, where if you squint just right, these things look similar enough, and then you only look at what fits, and deny what does not.

A far simpler explanation and one that actually matches history, is that Christianity came out of and is based on Judaism.