Would Jesus promote punishing the innocent instead of the guilty?

[The Grand Nudger]

Roger that. It's not as if they were taking dictation from other religions (except when they were.......)...... it's that people all over the world have decided to think about gods this way. Christians weren't the sole inventors, or the first inventors, or the last inventors, of redemption. They, like everyone else on earth, were influenced by culture - but we can probably agree that this influence wasn't required for them to come up with the kind of god they did anymore than christian influence was required for those others to come up with their take on the same.

Christians tell me that one god died to save the world, I see that, and raise them entire pantheons of gods who served the same function.

[GrandizerII]

By stating specifically that there were prior examples of figures who died for other people and then were resurrected. I just wonder where are these examples? Or rather what primary sources reveal those to be the case.

I agree nothing is truly unique about Christianity. Views evolve over time, yes, so one could argue that the resurrection of Jesus was derived from certain prior beliefs or whatever, but it doesn't mean they were based on some prior identical accounts of resurrections or that such prior accounts exist.

That's cool, but...as above, the observation that sacrificial gods are a thing is not the claim that christians copied those gods.  They never would have known about the sacrificial pantheons of mesoamerica.   Couldn't possibly have copied them, nor could the mesoamericans have known about christ and copied those beliefs.  

Multiple instances of parallel construction.  Like a bow.  Like fire.  Like boats.  Like agriculture.  Like a fishing hook.  This isn't evolution over time, it's not evolution at all.  

This is a generous appraisal, as we know for fact that christian authors were borrowers - but there's nothing wrong with that.  OFC they were going to borrow stories and twists and phrases they found engaging.  They borrowed the jewish god right from the outset, lol.  Is there a hellenic influence in the character of christ, for example?  OFC there is, but there was always going to be one, because hellenists came up with that particular instance of a sacrificial god.  If some other current was dominant it would show those influences, and in fact does, in the argument within the NT as to who and what jesus is.

Sacrifices for sin is in the OT itself. It's not just Hellenism (well, it's debatable in the case of the Greeks if sacrifices were done in relation to sin as the Jews understood it, but regardless). The thing with Christianity is that there are a few twists, such that God himself sent his own Son to be sacrificed for sin (as per the Gospel of John, for example). Prior to that, it was [generally] humans and animals being sacrificed.

Now why these beliefs specifically is of course to do with historical contingencies, not because of some divine revelation that actually occurred. Perhaps it was a major disappointment that the Messiah would just simply die without ushering in the awaited kingdom, and hence why the idea of the salvific death and resurrection gradually emerged, with maybe some influence from Hellenistic thinking. But the idea of God's Son dying for the world is basically a Christian idea, even if it had influences from prior systems of beliefs.

[The Grand Nudger]

The greeks absolutely believed in sin, it was odysseus sin that kept him so far from home for so long. They even believed in a force that carried sin from one place to the next, inflicting itself cyclically down through families.

The greeks also believed in divine forces that suffered and died for man, sacrificial gods. That's how we got fire. Light. You asked for an example of a sacrificial god and got an entire sacrificial pantheon from an uncontacted continent. It might not be any historic contingency that makes people imagine gods this way.

The point is, if your objection to there being piles of gods like christ is that this implies or depends on christians copying those religions - as it was, then your objection is irrelevant. No, it doesn't mean that, depend on that, or imply that. They did copy from other religions..but that's probably not how they arrived at the type of god they did, which is a type of god that exists in some form or another in every pantheon that we know about (and we assume much the same for the ones we don't and can't know about). Favor, redemption, and reward are universally desired goods. When we conceive of the divine as a transactional agent, we insist that they can provide these goods. Reciprocity is a universally observed human behavior. We struggle for our gods, and we insist that our gods will and have struggled for us. We die for them, they die for us. When human beings set the terms of the divine contract the document that follows is overwhelmingly human in it's aim, values, and insistence.

[Belacqua]

The thing with Christianity is that there are a few twists

As far as I can tell, everyone on this thread is in nearly complete agreement. 

We all acknowledge that Christianity (like any organized system of thought) took ideas from older groups and from its environment. And we all agree that main themes, like the resurrected god, occur with variations in different places. 

The point of contention seems to be some vague degree of originality. How different does a thing have to be to be original? 

I think what's happening is that Fake needs to work hard to keep any vaguely positive-sounding adjective as far away from Christianity as possible. So if someone says that the Christian combination of old ideas was original, that sounds too good. It can't be original if it is to conform with his axiom that everything about Christianity is negative. Or if someone says that Christianity is unique, this is unacceptable. 

But every religion is unique, in that it has to be sufficiently different to distinguish itself from its neighbors. And every religion is original, in that it re-sorts the available ideas in a manner that appeals to a different set of people, or appeals in a different way. 

The Christian dying God is not the same as the others. None of them is the same as the others. They're all a little different. None of them is simply a re-naming of an older version. 

Why this is the least bit objectionable I don't know.

[The Grand Nudger]

Due to christian framing, largely. It's insisted that christ is really real, and uniquely real as a god. That magic book is a historic document in that specific and meaningful sense, or it was all made up and borrowed.

If those are the choices that christians are presenting, it's the second one. In mere reality, it's neither - but you know how iffy the christian relationship to reality can be.

[Vicki Q]

Going back to an earlier point, Christianity grew originally as a subset of Judaism before splitting off. (This is very much the view of mainstream scholarship.)

Disregarding all notions of inspiration, the NT still provides an excellent guide to what the Early Church believed. (Whether they were right to believe it is another question).

Saul the Pharisee had spent his life working for the inauguration of  God's (Jewish) Kingdom. His Damascus road experience lead him to believe that it had happened (and he had missed it). His writing throughout the epistles includes very detailed analyses of how the events around Jesus fitted in to the story of Judaism.

The Jewish analysis runs throughout the Gospels. Whether it is OT quote after quote at the beginning of Matthew showing how the birth of Jesus fits in with the Jewish story; through things like Jesus' analysis of Torah questions/use of Jonah/association with Daniel 7's vision etc;  through to the very OT image of God as shepherd at the end of John.

Further, the Gospels are packed with Jesus announcing the inauguration of God's Kingdom. Whole books have been written on this.

Then Acts details the controversy over the place of Torah, Paul showing the Diaspora Jews where Jesus fits in, Revelation 10 “ the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants the prophets.” Big etc on the evidence.

The evidence for critical roots in Judaism is overwhelming. Indeed the idea that resurrection could actually be a thing is pretty much unknown outside the NT. And the resurrection was completely unique- attempts at parallels don't work because they are so different and...they don't explain why the Early Church thought the Kingdom of God had been inaugurated.

[The Grand Nudger]

Who told you that, it's simply not true. Resurrection is a very common theme.

Here again something that people all over the world with no credible chance of having ever contacted each other have tons and tons and tons of stories about resurrection, and how to achieve it. Maybe, and I'm just spitballing here, the themes we use to describe the divine and mans relationship to the divine are reflections of internal states common to human creatures.

Gives us a great answer to the op q, too. OFC jesus would do that, because we do.

[Greatest I am]

The evidence for critical roots in Judaism is overwhelming. Indeed the idea that resurrection could actually be a thing is pretty much unknown outside the NT. 

A small point that seems to refute that so I offer it for your files.

I do acknowledge that this version is not the one that Christianity adopted.

Where thy got their immoral version, I do not know.

Of course, Jesus dying for our sins is contrary to all that the Jewish law and Jesus himself would have taught so Jesus would not sanctioned such immoral thinking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrDGgKunPsY

Regards
DL

[The Grand Nudger]

We see what amounts to resurrection all around us every growing season, and we see death, and we want a piece of the former and to escape the latter.

That's what compelled christians, the same way it's compelled so many other people, to believe in such an immoral transaction. The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen, indeed.

[Greatest I am]

Gives us a great answer to the op q, too.  OFC jesus would do that, because we do.

??

You think we would ask another to abdicate their own responsibility for their actions and allow someone else to die for them?

I doubt that, because it is immoral and even immoral Christians run from this issue, which I think shows you wrong on this.

Regards
DL