Freedom of religion, not Freedom From Religion

[WVUforREDSKINS]

that lady at the end....she was the person who Rose saw to heal the cancer right?

and this isn't the LOST thread...

[Koolblue13]

Part 2 is that 9/11 was an inside job.

Part 3 claims that shadowy international bankers are running the world through the Federal reserve.

I screwed that up then. Part 3 is the part that makes the most sense.

Seems to be happening again as well.

But I'm not about to pick a fight with the guy holding the hammer right now.

[techboy]

Zeitgeist Part 1 (The "Jesus Myth" Hypothesis): The Source(s)

If you go through the list of "sources" for the Jesus section of Zeitgeist, you will find something interesting. Not one of the "sources" is an expert in the field. Acharya S, the primary source, has a degree in mythology, not history (This seems to be a common field of study for the "Jesus mythers", and I am reminded of the old saw that if the only tool one has is a hammer, pretty soon everything begins to look like a nail ). Many of the sources cited are listed as "author", which means "I don't have any credentials, but I wrote a book!". There is not a single historian of the time period or New Testament scholar listed in the credits of Zeitgeist, and for good reason. Virtually no serious scholar takes the "Jesus Myth" hypothesis seriously. (I'll cover that in Part 2 )

Let's focus on Acharya S., since she's the primary source for this part of the film. I'll start with the general, then I'll get on to The Christ Conspiracy (side note: I think the subtitle the Greatest Story Ever Sold is really clever, and about the only thing I like about the book, actually... ), which is where Zeitgeist gets this crap.

First, there is the fact that as I mentioned earlier, Acharya S is not an expert in the field (any field) in any sense. As I noted, she doesn't even have a Master's. Now, I'm not an expert either, of course, and neither are a few of the sources I sometimes cite, so in that sense, this doesn't have to be a problem. If she were to carefully cite others who were respected experts, then she wouldn't have to be an expert herself, just a good, sensible researcher, but that brings us to the next objection.

Second, Acharya S. is not a good researcher who makes use of well-qualified expert sources. She is an incredulous, agenda-driven writer who makes use of questionable and non-existent sources while ignoring or dismissing the people who actually know what they're talking about.

Frankly, she's a conspiracy nut on par with the people that claim that the U.S. never landed on the moon and NASA covered the whole thing up. Don't believe me? Let's look at a few things we can "learn" from her writings before we get to this book, specifically.

1) Jesus never existed as an historical person. This is also a claim of the book. Of course, nobody else credible does either. (More to come ). This contention by Acharya S is laughable in its own right, but it gets "better".

2) The Joos are trying to take over the world. From her website:

From some circles it appears that, rather than heading for a "new age of enlightenment" with increased personal freedom, including the freedom from religion, as is popularly believed, the United States--and by extension the world--is evidently being pushed instead towards a fascistic theocracy. Although governmental agencies may have had a hand behind some aspects of the "New Age Movement" (NAM), the One World Religion evidently intended by these various agencies is not the pastiche of airy-fairy, lovey-dovey concepts found within the NAM, by which everyone is equal and accepted.

Vying for the authorship of the One World Religion are evidently a number of factions, including certain interest groups that wish the theocracy to be based primarily on Judaic ideology, emulating the firm and merciless hand of Islam's mullahs and imams. Under such a dictatorship, books would be banned and burned, and freethinkers would be jailed or executed. If the Hassidic Jewish Movement has its way, the so-called Noahide Laws would be followed to the letter, as would many others found in the "Old Testament," prescribing capital punishment for abortion, euthanasia and "sexual deviation" such as adultery and homosexuality. The punishment, in fact, for breaking any of the Noahide Laws is decapitation.

3. Wait! Not if the Mormons get there first! You see, they smuggled uranium into Australia, where they intend to build and set off bombs to bring about the One World Government! The Joos are just helping, this time.

One way in which the Mormons became so powerful was exposed in conspiracy researcher extraordinaire Mae Brussell's "lost files," which were given to me by one of her "Brussell sprouts," and some of which have been published in Kenn Thomas and David Hatcher Childress's Inside the Gemstone Files.

In Tape #342 (8/4/78), entitled "Mormon Uranium and the One World Gov't," Brussell relates the report of an attorney Doug Wallace on a conference held by the "Latter Day Saints Freedom Foundation" on "Mormon Church Infiltration of Government Agencies Suspected of Sequestering Uranium Ore Outside the United States." The report relates that the Mormon Church illegally exported tons of uranium from Washington State and Utah to Australia, evidently in the late '50s. Says Brussell, "It is of no small moment that the LDS has infiltrated the CIA and the FBI, and that the special interests of the church have been handled by those church members who had the agencies of gov't to assist them in the conspiracy."

Brussell continues: "The objective of the Mormon conspiracy was to transport the ore beyond the control of the federal gov't. The avowed purpose of the church in its secret political conquest Council of Fifty, was to obtain nuclear capability for future use when it would attempt to obtain world conquest and single world government." The document further implicates Lyndon Johnson in the shipment of 10 million tons of ore to Australia. It also says, "The nuclear capability of Israel has resulted from this conspiracy, which provided for the highjacking of 200 tons of ore in 1968. The rumor was widespread in the knowledgeable circles of Salt Lake City that the Mormon Church had arranged to assist Israel in bringing off Armageddon."

Unfortunately, this kind of "research" carries over into her book, The Christ Conspiracy. In the book Acharya S uses out of date, discredited sources, such as Wells and Cumont (if she even bothers to cite sources at all) in order to support wild, unsubstantiated theories. Her primary source for instance, in trying to show that the texts of the New Testament are late 2nd century frauds (more on this later) is Joseph Wheless (continuing the pattern, an attorney, not an expert). See here for an analysis of how erroneous Wheless is.

Time and again, Acharya S uses erroneous, non-expert sources that support her agenda, while ignoring good, solid scholarship which is inconvenient to her case. A good list of many of the problems in the book is here, but I'll just focus on one.

The central claim she pins the rest of her book on is that the Gospels and other texts of the New Testament are late 2nd century forgeries. This is not an accident... she knows darn well that mythological development takes at least that long.

So, Acharya S knows that the premise of her whole book absolutely hinges on the idea that the Gospels were not written until the late 2nd century, and of course if things were made up, they have to also be forgeries, right? Here's a quote from page 34 of the book:

Although they are held up by true believers to be the "inspired" works of the apostles, the canonical gospels were forged at the end of the 2nd century, all four of them probably between 170-180, a date that just happens to correspond with the establishment of the orthodoxy and supremacy of the Roman Church.

Now, I could cite legions of reputable scholars, ranging from Christian to atheist, who all date all of the Gospels at the latest in the 1st century, 30 to 60 years after the Resurrection (many scholars go earlier, but that's more controversial).

Or, I could point out the incredible weakness of the arguments she makes to support this dating, or as I already have, the serious problems with the source (Wheless) she draws much of this from.

But really, I don't need to do any of that. Take a look at this.

The importance of this fragment is quite out of proportion to its size, since it may with some confidence be dated in the first half of the second century A.D., and thus ranks as the earliest known fragment of the New Testament in any language.

What you are looking at is a fragment of the Gospel of John, known as p52, originally discovered in Egypt and now held at the John Rylands library (the link above takes you to the library). The accepted dating of this fragment is 125 A.D, though this can range by as much as 25 years either way, thus the 100-150 dating listed "first half of the 2nd century".

We can take two things away from this.

1) If the fragment itself was written in Egypt between 100 and 150 A.D., then the original Gospel of John must have been written earlier than that (and likely well earlier, since there must have taken at least some time to spread that far).

2) Even if that fragment was the original (which it obviously isn't), it still predates A.D. 180 by at least 30 years.

Central theory destroyed. Book dead. If anyone out there was planning to read this book, please calculate the value of your time as an hourly wage and your speed of reading and send me a check for what I've saved you.

Seriously, though, this is a good example of the problem with this author. P52 (the fragment) has been around for years, and well before this book, and yet she still proposes this crazy theory.

And so, we see that Zeitgeist's sources aren't credible, aren't experts, and in the case of the primary "source", probably a crazy anti-Semite.

[Springfield]

techboy wins. Thread over. That is how he rolls.

God always wins. Every, single, time.

[techboy]

Zeitgeist Part 1 (The "Jesus Myth" Hypothesis): What do the EXPERTS have to say?

The simple fact is that pretty much anyone who has done any reading at all in the field of Jesus history knows that virtually no serious scholar in the field argues that Jesus was not an historical person. No one. Not the atheists, not the skeptics, not the Christians. No one.

It's not even an area of dispute, in a field where virtually everything is disputed by somebody.

For instance, Wikipedia, while not a scholarly source in itself, is sometimes a good place to get an overview and a listing of sources. Try their article on the Jesus Myth hypothesis. A telling excerpt:

The historian Michael Grant states, for example, that, "To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first rank scholars.' In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." - Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (Scribner, 1995)

While you're reading the article, note that of the proponents of the theory, not a one is actually an expert in the field (clicking on a person's name will take you to his or her page, which usually includes a biography). G.A. Wells, for instance, is the most prominent of the "mythers", and he is a Professor of German!

Sounds just like the sources from Zeitgeist we talked about in my last post, right?

If you're interested in heavier reading, try this summary of a academic listserv discussing the historical Jesus. Consider, for instance, this answer by John Dominic Crossan, who is about as far from a fundamentalist Christian as one can get:

If I understand what Earl Doherty is arguing, Neil, it is that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as an historical person, or, at least that historians, like myself, presume that he did and act on that fatally flawed presumption.

I am not sure, as I said earlier, that one can persuade people that Jesus did exist as long as they are ready to explain the entire phenomenon of historical Jesus and earliest Christianity either as an evil trick or a holy parable. I had a friend in Ireland who did not believe that Americans had landed on the moon but that they had created the entire thing to bolster their cold-war image against the communists. I got nowhere with him. So I am not at all certain that I can prove that the historical Jesus existed against such an hypothesis and probably, to be honest, I am not even interested in trying.

It was, however, that hypothesis taken not as a settled conclusion, but as a simple question that was behind the first pages of BofC when I mentioned Josephus and Tacitus. I do not think that either of them checked out Jewish or Roman archival materials about Jesus. I think they were expressing the general public knowledge that "everyone" had about this weird group called Christians and their weird founder called Christ. The existence, not just of Christian materials, but of those other non-Christian sources, is enough to convince me that we are dealing with an historical individual. Furthermore, in all the many ways that opponents criticized earliest Christianity, nobody ever suggested that it was all made up. That in general, is quite enough for me.

There was one other point where I think Earl Doherty simply misstated what I did. In BofC, after the initial sections on materials and methods (1-235), I spent about equal time in Galilee (237-406) , or at least to the north, and in Jerusalem with pre-Pauline materials (407-573). I agree that if we had a totally different and irreconcilable vision/program between Paul and Q (just to take an example), it would require some very good explaining. Part of what I was doing, for example, in talking about the Common Meal Tradition was showing how even such utterly distinct eucharistic scenarios as Didache 9-10 and I Cor 11-12 have rather fascinating common elements behind and between them. It is a very different thing, in summary, for Paul to say that he is not interested in the historical Jesus (Jesus in the flesh) than to say that "no Galilee and no historical Jesus lie behind Paul."

Paragraph 3 is especially telling, I think.

One more passage by Crossan:

I am not certain, Neil, that I have much to add to my previous post. I do not claim "ideological immunity" against the possibility that the historical Jesus never existed. That such a person existed is an historical conclusion for me, and neither a dogmatic postulate nor a theological presupposition. My very general arguments are: (1) that existence is given in Christian, pagan, and Jewish sources; (2) it is never negated by even the most hostile critics of early Christianity (Jesus is a **** and a fool but never a myth or a fiction!); (3) there are no historical parallels that I know of from that time and period that help me understand such a total creation. There is, however, a fourth point that I touched on in BofC 403-406. It is crucially important for me that Jesus sent out companions and told them to do exactly what he was doing (not in his name, but as part of the Kingdom of God). The most basic continuity that I see between Jesus and those companions was, as I put it, not in mnemonics, but in mimetics. In other words, they were imitating his lifestyle and not just remembering his words. I find that emphasized in the Q Gospel’s indictment of those who talk, but do not do, and in the Didache’s emphasis on the ways (tropoi) of the Lord (not just words/logoi). When, therefore, I look at a phrase such as "blessed are the destitute," and am quite willing to argue that it comes from the historical Jesus, I am always at least as sure that it represents the accurate summary of an attitude as the accurate recall of a saying. For analogy: If Gandhi had developed a large movement after his death of people who are living in non-violent resistance to oppression, and one of them cited an aphorism of Gandhi, namely "if you do not stand on a small bug, why would you stand on a Big Bug," I would be more secure on the continuity in lifestyle than in memory and could work on that as basis.

That about sums it up, and if you know anything about Crossan, you know that (unlike me ) he is not writing from any theological bias.

[Koolblue13]

techboy wins. Thread over. That is how he rolls.

God always wins. Every, single, time.

You could just see him chomping at the bit on this one.

[Springfield]

techboy wins. Thread over. That is how he rolls.

God always wins. Every, single, time.

techboy wins. Thread over. That is how he rolls.

God always wins. Every, single, time.

[Koolblue13]

techboy wins. Thread over. That is how he rolls.

God always wins. Every, single, time.

lol. I've seen him do this before and I've learned, just get out of the way.

[Springfield]

You could just see him chomping at the bit on this one.

It's all good though. I have the utmost respect for techboy. The man knows what he's talking about.

[techboy]

Zeitgeist Part 1 (The "Jesus Myth" Hypothesis): What do the EXPERTS have to say about mythological development of Jesus in general?

Jesus is a popular target for "parallelism" on Mr. Internet. The ones I hear most commonly are Mithras and Horus, so let's look at those. Then we'll cover Osiris and others, and then parallelism in general.

Just a preface here... most of this stuff floating around the internet is based on work by Francis Cumont (or nobody at all), and has been since discarded by more modern research, which has determined that most of the parallels are bogus, and where they do exist, generally they would have to be the other way around (Mithraism borrowing from Christianity) due to the dating. The following quotes are from an interview Lee Strobel does with Dr. Edwin Yamuachi, a foremost expert in this field, who among his extensive qualifications, was a participant at the Second Mythraic Mysteries Congress in Tehran in 1975. Quotes are from Strobel's The Case for the Real Jesus. All quote Dr. Yamauchi directly.

Here's what happened at the Congress:

The Congress produced two volumes of papers. A scholar named Richard Gordon from England and others concluded that Cumont's theory was not supported by the evidence and, in fact, Cumont's interpretations have now been analyzed and rejected on all major points. Contrary to what Cumont believed. even though Mithras was a Persian god who was attested to as early as the fourteenth century B.C., we have almost no evidence of Mithraism in the sense of a mystery religion in the West until very late-too late to have influenced the beginnings of Christianity. (page 168)

More quotes from Dr. Yamauchi on the problems with the idea that Mithraism influenced Christianity:

The first public recognition of Mithras in Rome was the state visit of Tiridates, the king of Armenia, in AD 66.. It's said that he addressed Nero by saying, 'And I have come to thee, my god, to worship thee as I do Mithras.' There is also a reference earlier to some pirates in Cilicia who were worshipers of Mithras, but, this is NOT the same as Mithraism as a mystery religion. (page 169)

Mithraism as a mystery religion cannot be attested before anout AD 90, which is about the time we seee a Mithraic motif in a poem by Statius. No mithraea [or Mithraic temples] have been found at Pompeii, which was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. The earliest Mithraic inscription in the West is a statue of a prefect under the emperor Trajan in AD 101. It's now in the British Museum. (page 169)

The earliest mithraea are dated to the early second century. There are a handful of inscriptions that date to the early second century, but the vast majority of texts are dated to AD 140. Most of what we have as evidence of Mithraism comes in the second, third, and fourth centuries AD. That's basically what's wrong with the theories about Mithraism influencing the beginnings of Christianity (page 169)

Gordon dates the estanblishment of the Mithraic mysteries to the reign of Hadrian, which was AD 117-138, or Antoninus Pius, which would be from 138 to 161. (page 169)

Specifically, Gordon said, 'It is therefore reasonable to argue that Western Mithraism did not exist until the mid-second century, at least in a developed sense (page 169)

Editor's note: Dr. Gordon is a senior fellow at the University of East Anglia.

Further, most of the parallels aren't even true! For example, Mithras was not born of a virgin. He sprang out of solid rock! Dr. Yamauchi again:

He [Mithras] was born out of a rock. Yes, the rock birth is commonly depicted in Mithraic beliefs. Mithras emerges fully grown and naked except for a Phrygian cap, and he's holding a dagger and torch. In some variations, flames shoot out from the rock, or he's holding a globe in his hands. (page 171)

Also, Mithras wasn't ressurected (more on the uniqueness of this story later, by the way, and not just about Mithras). Actually, there's no record of Mithras dying at all!

We don't know anything about the death of Mithras. We have a lot of monuments, but we have almost no textual evidence, because this was a secret religion. But I know of no supposed references to a death and resurrection. Indeed, Richard Gordon declared in his book "Image and Value in the Greco-Roman World" that there is "no death of Mithras"-and thus, there cannot be a resurrection. (page 172)

The December 25 parallel is often claimed, but the Christian church didn't adopt that date until the 4th century, so that's not a parallel with the Bible either.

I'll stop the detail here, because I have a lot to still cover, but I think that's sufficient to demonstrate that there is absolutely no evidence that Christianity borrowed from Mithraism, and if anything, Mithraism may well have borrowed from Christianity!

Now, though, I'd like to bump up a level, and talk about how and why scholars have rejected the notion that there is any pagan mythological "copycat" influence on the Christian story (hopefully, this will also put to rest whatever "parallels" I skipped).

The following is from T.N.D. Mettinger's book, The Riddle of Ressurection: "Dying and Rising Gods" in the Ancient Near East.

First, Mettinger's assessment of the current state of scholarship, from Chapter 1.2.1: Where Do We Stand? The Task of the Present Work (This quote is from page 40):

As a result of the many decades of research since de Vaux (1933), "it has become commonplace to assume that the category of Mediterranean 'dying and rising' gods has been exploded... (I)t is now held that the majority of the gods so denoted appear to have died but not returned; there is death but no rebirth or ressurection." These words of J.Z. Smith aptly summarise the present state of research. (56)

Mettinger spends a lot of time in this chapter discussing this: the current consensus of scholars is that there are no "dying and rising" gods that predate Christ, and that, in fact, many of the references came after Christ, and are in fact more likely either cases of pagans borrowing from Christians, and not the other way around, or, as in the case of the Church moving Jesus' birthday to Dec. 25, an attempt by early Christians to attract followers of various pagan beliefs.

Now, I want to be totally fair here: although Mettinger shows the current state of scholarship, he then goes on to say that he is one of the few that disagree, and the book is an attempt to make his case that there are in fact a few "dying and rising" gods that pre-date Christianity. He makes a fairly good argument, too, for the gods Melqart, Adonis, Osiris, and Dumuzi. Most scholars disagree with him, but it's a fair argument. Note please, that nowhere in this list is Mithras, by the way.

Before the "Christ mythers" declare victory, though, along with the fact that he is in the extreme minority on this issue, there is also this quote from page 221, in the Epilogue (the bold emphasis is mine, the italics are his):

(1)The figures we have studied are deities. In the case of Jesus, we are confronted with a human (for whom divinity was claimed by himself and by his followers). For the disciples and for Paul, the resurrection of Jesus was a one-time, historical event that took place at one specific point in the earth's topography. The empty tomb was seen as a historical datum. (4)

(2) The dying and rising gods were closely related to the seasonal cycle. Their death and return were seen as reflected in the changes of plant life. The death and ressurection of Jesus is a one-time event, not repeated, and unrelated to seasonal changes.

(3) The death of Jesus is presented in the sources as vicarious suffering, as an act of atonement for sins. The myth of Dumuzi has an arrangement with bilocation and substitution, but there is no evidence for the death of the dying and rising gods as vicarious suffering for sins.

There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world. While studied with profit against the background of Jewish resurrection belief, the faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique character in the history of religions. The riddle remains.

So, to sum up:

1) The vast majority of scholars reject the idea of pre-Christian "dying and rising gods" at all.

2) Mettinger, who while in the minority, makes a pretty good case that there are a few, also firmly concludes that there is no evidence that the Jewish Jesus was a myth based on other stories. Jesus is unique.

The point about Jesus' essential Judaism is key to the current scholarly rejection of the myth hypothesis. As Dr. William Lane Craig writes in Reply to Evan Fales: On the Empty Tomb of Jesus:

Now from D. F. Strauss through Rudolf Bultmann the role of myth in the shaping of the gospels was a question of lively debate in New Testament scholarship. But with the advent of the so–called "Third Quest" of the historical Jesus and what one author has called "the Jewish reclamation of Jesus,"{1} that is, the rediscovery of the Jewishness of Jesus, scholars have come to appreciate that the proper context for understanding Jesus and the gospels is first–century Palestinian Judaism, not pagan mythology. A most informative article on the demise of myth as a useful interpretive category for the gospels is Craig Evans's "Life–of–Jesus Research and the Eclipse of Mythology," in which he chronicles and accounts for the "major shift" away from mythology as a relevant factor in gospel interpretation.{2}

Given that Jesus and the gospels find their natural home in first century, Palestinian Judaism, recourse to pagan mythology to explain them has become otiose. Hence, we find James Dunn, called upon to write the article on "Myth" for the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, questioning even the need for such an entry in the dictionary: "Myth is a term of at best doubtful relevance to the study of Jesus and the Gospels…The fact that 'myth' even appears here as a subject related to the study of Jesus and the Gospels can be attributed almost entirely to the use of the term by two NT scholars"–Strauss and Bultmann.{3} In lamenting that most commentators have no "knowledge of–or at least, they certainly ignore–the tools that modern anthropology has provided for the analysis of myths and myth construction," Fales tacitly recognizes that his views in gospel interpretation would be rejected by the vast majority of NT critics (and not, therefore, simply by "fundamentalists!"). What he does not appreciate is that the construal of the gospels in terms of myth has been tried and found wanting by NT scholarship.

(Editor's note: I had to look it up. "Otiose" means useless. )

Further, there just isn't enough time between the events and the writings for the kind of legendary development necessary for a myth-based story.

From Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ by Dr. William Lane Craig:

First, the resurrection appearances. Undoubtedly the major impetus for the reassessment of the appearance tradition was the demonstration by Joachim Jeremias that in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5 Paul is quoting an old Christian formula which he received and in turn passed on to his converts According to Galatians 1:18 Paul was in Jerusalem three years after his conversion on a fact-finding mission, during which he conferred with Peter and James over a two week period, and he probably received the formula at this time, if not before. Since Paul was converted in AD 33, this means that the list of witnesses goes back to within the first five years after Jesus' death. Thus, it is idle to dismiss these appearances as legendary. We can try to explain them away as hallucinations if we wish, but we cannot deny they occurred. Paul's information makes it certain that on separate occasions various individuals and groups saw Jesus alive from the dead. According to Norman Perrin, the late NT critic of the University of Chicago: "The more we study the tradition with regard to the appearances, the firmer the rock begins to appear upon which they are based." This conclusion is virtually indisputable.

At the same time that biblical scholarship has come to a new appreciation of the historical credibility of Paul's information, however, it must be admitted that skepticism concerning the appearance traditions in the gospels persists. This lingering skepticism seems to me to be entirely unjustified. It is based on a presuppositional antipathy toward the physicalism of the gospel appearance stories. But the traditions underlying those appearance stories may well be as reliable as Paul's. For in order for these stories to be in the main legendary, a very considerable length of time must be available for the evolution and development of the traditions until the historical elements have been supplanted by unhistorical. This factor is typically neglected in New Testament scholarship, as A. N. Sherwin-White points out in Roman Law and Roman Society tn the New Testament. Professor Sherwin-White is not a theologian; he is an eminent historian of Roman and Greek times, roughly contemporaneous with the NT. According to Professor Sherwin-White, the sources for Roman history are usually biased and removed at least one or two generations or even centuries from the events they record. Yet, he says, historians reconstruct with confidence what really happened. He chastises NT critics for not realizing what invaluable sources they have in the gospels. The writings of Herodotus furnish a test case for the rate of legendary accumulation, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts. When Professor Sherwin-White turns to the gospels, he states for these to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be 'unbelievable'; more generations are needed. All NT scholars agree that the gospels were written down and circulated within the first generation, during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. Indeed, a significant new movement of biblical scholarship argues persuasively that some of the gospels were written by the AD 50's. This places them as early as Paul's letter to the Corinthians and, given their equal reliance upon prior tradition, they ought therefore to be accorded the same weight of historical credibility accorded Paul. It is instructive to note in this connection that no apocryphal gospel appeared during the first century. These did not arise until after the generation of eyewitnesses had died off. These are better candidates for the office of 'legendary fiction' than the canonical gospels. There simply was insufficient time for significant accrual of legend by the time of the gospels' composition. Thus, I find current criticism's skepticism with regard to the appearance traditions in the gospels to be unwarranted. The new appreciation of the historical value of Paul's information needs to be accompanied by a reassessment of the gospel traditions as well.

Ultimately, though, I think the biggest stumbling block to the idea that the stories of Jesus were "borrowed" from anywhere is that it is a historical fact that the disciples and early Christians really believed that they had encountered the risen Jesus.

Consider this passage from Resurrection Research from 1975 to the Present: What are Critical Scholars Saying, by Dr. Gary Habermas. Keep in mind that this is a survey of critical scholars.

I like to quote this section:

Bart Ehrman explains that, “Historians, of course, have no difficulty whatsoever speaking about the belief in Jesus’ resurrection, since this is a matter of public record. For it is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution.” This early belief in the resurrection is the historical origination of Christianity.[91]

As we have mentioned throughout, there are certainly disagreements about the nature of the experiences. But it is still crucial that the nearly unanimous consent[92] of critical scholars is that, in some sense, the early followers of Jesus thought that they had seen the risen Jesus.

This conclusion does not rest on the critical consensus itself, but on the reasons for the consensus, such as those pointed out above. A variety of paths converge here, including Paul's eyewitness comments regarding his own experience (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8), the pre-Pauline appearance report in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, probably dating from the 30s, Paul's second Jerusalem meeting with the major apostles to ascertain the nature of the Gospel (Gal. 2:1-10), and Paul's knowledge of the other apostles' teachings about Jesus' appearances (1 Cor. 15:9-15, especially 15:11). Further, the early Acts confessions, the conversion of James, the brother of Jesus, the transformed lives that centered on the resurrection, the later Gospel accounts, and, most scholars would agree, the empty tomb. This case is built entirely on critically-ascertained texts, and confirmed by many critical principles such as eyewitness testimony, early reports, multiple attestation, discontinuity, embarrassment, enemy declarations, and coherence.[93]

Please keep in mind that Dr. Ehrman is not a Christian. He is a skeptic.

Not only is it an historical certainty (insofar that we can be certain of anything, historically) that Jesus existed, it is also an historical fact that the earliest Christians really believed that they had encountered the risen Jesus, which makes the myth theory ridiculous on its face.

It doesn't matter how many apparent parallels there are, if the early Christians were reporting what they thought actualy happened.

There was a thread a while back talking about all the "eerie similarities" between Kennedy and Lincoln. Did anyone come away with the conclusion that Kennedy must have been a myth, based on the stories of Lincoln?

No? That's why the community of scholars has roundly rejected parallelism. No "wholesale cribbing" here.

[Zguy28]

techboy wins. Thread over. That is how he rolls.

God always wins. Every, single, time.

Its almost like watching Jason Bourne in action, but on a message board.

[techboy]

Zeitgeist Part 1 (The "Jesus Myth" Hypothesis): The Astrology Angle

Zeitgeist asserts that the story of Jesus was based on the ages of astrology, and that Jesus, "the fish" represented the entry into the age of Pisces. We've already seen that this couldn't be true (because mythological development on that scale is rejected by scholars in general), but looking a little deeper we see that even this specific is riddled with errors.

Look here. (Note: Ms. Murdock is the real name of the pen name Acharya S. Remember, she's the main source, so this is very relevant).

Is it true that astrology played a large part in the formation of Christianity as Ms. Murdock asserts? Noel Swerdlow is Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. He has specialized in the study of the practice of astronomy in antiquity through the 17th century. I emailed Dr. Swerdlow on this matter. Here is what he had to say on Ms. Murdock’s view:

In antiquity, constellations were just groups of stars, and there were no borders separating the region of one from the region of another. In astrology, for computational purposes the zodiacal signs were taken as twelve arcs of 30 degrees measured from the vernal equinox. Because of the slow westward motion of the equinoxes and solstices, what we call the precession of the equinoxes, these did not correspond to the constellations with the same names. But . . . within which group of stars the vernal equinox was located, was of no astrological significance at all. The modern ideas about the Age of Pisces or the Age of Aquarius are based upon the location of the vernal equinox in the regions of the stars of those constellations. But the regions, the borders between, those constellations are a completely modern convention of the International Astronomical Union for the purpose of mapping . . . and never had any astrological significance. I hope this is helpful although in truth what this woman is claiming is so wacky that it is hardly worth answering.(5) So when this woman says that the Christian fish was a symbol of the 'coming age of Pisces', she is saying something that no one would have thought of in antiquity because in which constellation of the fixed stars the vernal equinox was located, was of no significance and is entirely an idea of modern, I believe twentieth-century, astrology.(6)

In other words, the ancient "Christ conspirators" could not have recognized the 12 celestial sections in order to incorporate them into a Christian myth and announce the ushering in of the Age of Pisces as Murdock claims, because the division into the celestial sections did not occur until a meeting of the International Astronomical Union in the 20th century!(7) Therefore, her claim is without any merit.

Emphasis mine.

Or, look here.

There's another good quote from Dr. Swerdlow:

Nor is there a scrap of evidence for knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes before Hipparchus (2nd century BC). Even for Hipparchus it was just one of different possible explanations for why distances of bright stars from the equinoxes did not seem to be constant, using observations of his own compared with those of Timocharis and Aristyllus in the early third century, evidently the earliest he had that were applicable to this. Much has been made in recent years of an early date for the equinox in Taurus, meaning among the stars of the constellation Taurus. But again there is no ancient evidence for this, and citing references to a bull is not evidence. Taurus is often referred to as a sign of spring, but this does not mean that the equinox is located among its stars, only that the sun is in Taurus in the spring, which is obviously true but trivial. There are also ancient sources, as referred to by Varro, that take the midpoint of Taurus as the beginning of summer, with Taurus here considered as a sign of thirty degrees. Does this mean that the summer solstice is located in Taurus? No, just that there is variation in relating agricultural seasons to the location of the sun in the zodiac. The location of the equinox among one or another zodiacal constellation, as the so-called Age of Aquarius or Age of Pisces, is something of concern to modern astrology, but is never mentioned as significant in ancient astrology. It is simply anachronistic to believe that what is important to twentieth century astrology was of importance to ancient astrology. To name another anachronism that appears to underlie her interpretation, the borders of constellations, between, say, Aries, Pisces, and Aquarius, are modern conventions of the International Astronomical Union, and there is nothing ancient about them. Ancient astrologers did not use Norton’s Star Atlas nor anything else that drew arbitrary lines between sidereal constellations.

Also, one from Dr. Edwin Krupp:

Professor Swerdlow is well informed on the ancient history of astronomy and astrology, and his report to you reflects current scholarly opinion formulated by textual evidence. Although people have traditionally projected terrestrial concerns and priorities onto the sky in celestial myth, the detailed astrological mapping your opponent advocates is not supported by evidence and certainly cannot be tracked back two millennia or more as described.

(In case anyone's counting, just to get back to Jesus and the "man with a jug of water" takes, oh, two millennia or so... )

Oh, and the symbol of Christianity was a fish because the Greek for "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior" spelled out the Greek word for "fish", Ich'thys.

Further, there are a lot of fish references in the New Testament because they lived near the sea. Shocker! There are also references to camels, pins, tax collectors, donkeys, and pharisees. How do those fit into the age of Aquarius, exactly?

This part's junk too.

[Springfield]

Its almost like watching Jason Bourne in action, but on a message board.

Yup. Every one else is epic fail right now. EPIC!

This is techboy:

And this... is every one else:

[techboy]

I think that wraps up part one. I'll be happy to field any questions at this time.

[Vicious]

No I don't believe that Jesus did not exist, or a 9/11 conspiracy, or a banking conspiracy.

That's just stupid.

[techboy]

No I don't believe that Jesus did not exist, or a 9/11 conspiracy, or a banking conspiracy.

That's just stupid.

Of course you don't.

[Springfield]

I think that wraps up part one. I'll be happy to field any questions at this time.

But I thought part one was entertaining...

[Vicious]

Here's the real conspiracy.. did he already have those typed up from a different place when he learned about the movie a time ago and just space out his replies by 10-12 minutes in order to make it look like he was currently typing it up?

I'd humor you but I've already heard about Zeitgeist. From you in fact, I think. That's while I'll just leave it at... it's entertaining.

-SpringfieldSkins

Now that's a conspiracy!

[techboy]

Here's the real conspiracy.. did he already have those typed up from a different place when he learned about the movie a time ago and just space out his replies by 10-12 minutes in order to make it look like he was currently typing it up?

I make no secret of the fact that I frequently copy and paste my older posts, updating and touching up as needed. Much of that material came from previous discussions (one of which was with you ), including a couple about Zeitgeist. I certainly don't type that fast.

[Springfield]

Here's the real conspiracy.. did he already have those typed up from a different place when he learned about the movie a time ago and just space out his replies by 10-12 minutes in order to make it look like he was currently typing it up?

-SpringfieldSkins

Now that's a conspiracy!

Believe me... I've heard all I need to hear about Zeitgeist from techboy. I watched it long ago and found it rather interesting. We will leave it at that. Some things I may believe, some I may not.

Of all things though, believe that techboy spent all of the last half hour hand typing all of those responses out. It wouldn't have been very god like if he didn't.

[Springfield]

Of all things though, believe that techboy spent all of the last half hour hand typing all of those responses out. It wouldn't have been very god like if he didn't.

Apparently I was wrong.

Jesus hates you techboy!

[Vicious]

So it's true?! Then all bets are off, anything can be true now, even fairy tales!

[techboy]

So it's true?! Then all bets are off, anything can be true now, even fairy tales!

Some people seem to believe that Universe simply sprang into existence, from nothing, by nothing, and for no reason at all. In such a world, anything is indeed possible.

[Vicious]

Do those same people you claim exist believe they are 100% correct?

[ljs]

To use the classic example, no one has ever tried to prohibit public school students from praying in school. (Not only does the government lack the authority, it lacks the ability to do so.) They've prohibited attempts to encourage other students to pray.

actually they have, my nephew was about 8 or so and told that he couldn't pray at lunch at a public school. It never made headlines cause my sister just put him in a christian school the next year.