Jesus Wasn't The Only God To Be Crucified And Resurrected

[Minnesota]

Saviour-gods mutilated throughout antiquity


TOM HARPUR Toronto Star

One of the big questions nobody has asked about Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ is this: If the crucifixion was a historic event and so central to the Christian Gospel, why is it that there is no evidence whatever of a man on a cross in Christian art and monuments for almost seven centuries?

Not until 692 CE, in the reign of Emperor Justinian II, was it decreed that henceforth instead of a lamb (the zodiacal sign of Aries) fixed on the cross, the figure of Jesus be placed there instead. Another question: How is it that the earliest known figure of any man on a cross comes from about 300 BCE and that "person" is not Jesus but Orpheus, a mythical Greek sun-god?

More significantly, why were there so many crucified or otherwise mutilated saviour-gods in antiquity? One has only to think of the cutting to pieces of the later resurrected Osiris, or of Horus, or Dionysus, or Prometheus, or many more similarly tortured hero-divinities. Scholar Kersey Graves once wrote a book titled The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviours. Seminary didn't tell me that.

Surely the question must arise in minds that are accustomed to thinking and not just to accepting every story presented by state, religion, or the media at its surface value: Could there be some deeper meaning to this whole dying-rising god myth that pops up everywhere in the ancient world? Was Mel Gibson's greatest error not the ubiquitous and ever-so-carefully filmed gore in his two-hour sermon but the fact that he took absolutely literally something that can only be properly understood in the context of what crucifixion symbolism is all about?


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[Dee Dee Warren]

Garbage in, garbage out. Anyone have the time, patience, and clothespin to take out this trash?

[jason]

One of the big questions nobody has asked about Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ is this: If the crucifixion was a historic event and so central to the Christian Gospel, why is it that there is no evidence whatever of a man on a cross in Christian art and monuments for almost seven centuries?

It is called the second commandment assuming this is even an accurate statement of fact.

More significantly, why were there so many crucified or otherwise mutilated saviour-gods in antiquity? One has only to think of the cutting to pieces of the later resurrected Osiris, or of Horus, or Dionysus, or Prometheus, or many more similarly tortured hero-divinities. Scholar Kersey Graves once wrote a book titled The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviours. Seminary didn't tell me that.

Oh dear. Try to get specific with examples before the claim is made that they are a paralell.

Surely the question must arise in minds that are accustomed to thinking and not just to accepting every story presented by state, religion, or the media at its surface value: Could there be some deeper meaning to this whole dying-rising god myth that pops up everywhere in the ancient world?

Yes there is. Why is it a surprise to anybody that Satan would ape God's great plan of salvation ?

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Not if it is this bad.

Jason

[Chuck Lee]

I'm afraid I fail to see how any of these characters qualify as "savior" gods. I'm not even sure how some of them, like Prometheus, qualify as "resurrected". Sure, he got his liver eaten every day, and that was really painful, but not deadly in his case. And getting his liver eaten didn't have much of any impact on salvation of humankind.

How does Orpheus qualify as a Greek sun-god? I've never seen that variation before. And that one's an extremely remote resemblance to Jesus, to say the least.

[jason]

I'm afraid I fail to see how any of these characters qualify as "savior" gods. I'm not even sure how some of them, like Prometheus, qualify as "resurrected". Sure, he got his liver eaten every day, and that was really painful, but not deadly in his case. And getting his liver eaten didn't have much of any impact on salvation of humankind.

How does Orpheus qualify as a Greek sun-god? I've never seen that variation before. And that one's an extremely remote resemblance to Jesus, to say the least.

Now you know what is business as usual for people propagating ideas like this.

It is just pathetic some of the lengths people will go too to attack christianity.

Of course this is the best they can do

Jason

[seer]

One of the big questions nobody has asked about Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ is this: If the crucifixion was a historic event and so central to the Christian Gospel, why is it that there is no evidence whatever of a man on a cross in Christian art and monuments for almost seven centuries?

The crucifixion was an historical event. And is central to the Christian faith. References on demand. But the cross is another story - we really do not know if Christ was sacrificed on a cross or a simple stake/tree. But the cross (as commonly understood)does point to the fact of His death.

More significantly, why were there so many crucified or otherwise mutilated saviour-gods in antiquity? One has only to think of the cutting to pieces of the later resurrected Osiris, or of Horus, or Dionysus, or Prometheus, or many more similarly tortured hero-divinities. Scholar Kersey Graves once wrote a book titled The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviours. Seminary didn't tell me that.

Graves book is not scholarly. It is filled with assumptions. And any objective reader will see that these are not similar in practice or result - i.e. the meaning of the death.

Why is it a surprise to anybody that Satan would ape God's great plan of salvation ?

Or the dying and rising god myths were God's way of getting the human mind ready for the actual...

[CatholicSage]

I don't understand how a few mutilated mythological figures so closely translates into multiple "crucified...saviour-gods." Whoever wrote that is REEEAALLLY stretching the Christ-myth "argument."

[Matthew Henry]

Who cares how many mythological gods there were or what happened to them? If you have a presupposition against Christ, there will always be a myriad of reasons not to believe on Him.

I will be praying that God opens your heart to the gospel

[jimbo]

The earliest Christians saw the similarities of their religion to earlier religions and they invented a term to help explain it. They described the similarities between Christianity and earlier religions as "diabolical mimicry" which they attributed to Satan. They believed-or at least they tried to promote the idea-that Satan had anticipated Christianity and had created all these similar earlier religions to try to confuse Christians and cause them to lose their faith.

No really, this is what they actually tried to claim.

One of the things that modern Christians do when they are faced with this problem is to split hairs. For example, they will say that, gee whiz, this earlier godman did not die on a cross but on a tree, or this earlier godman did not perform the exact same miracles in the exact same order that Jesus did, or this earlier godman died as a sacrifice to wipe away people's sins, but he did not actually rise from the dead like Jesus, or this godman's death and resurection was tied to the agricultural cycles, while Jesus' death and resurrection was not, etc., etc., ad nauseum. These Christians will quibble over minor details, ignoring or denying the glaringly obvious parallels between these earlier religions and Christianity. But of course, as committed Christians, they cannot admit that their religion is a bogus imitation of earlier religions.

Here are some comments from Justin Martyr as well as one from Tertullian, two early Christian apologists who had to do quite a bit of tap-dancing to explain away the obvious similarities between their johnny-come-lately religion and all the already established religions:

Justin Martyr "ANALOGIES TO THE HISTORY OF CHRIST. And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; Aesculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars? And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre?"

(snip)

"As to the objection of our Jesus’s being crucified, I say, that suffering was common to all the aforementioned sons of Jove [Jupiter] . . . As to his being born of a virgin, you have your Perseus to balance that. As to his curing the lame, and the paralytic, and such as were cripples from birth, this is little more than what you say of your Aesculapius."

(snip)

"It having reached the Devil’s ears that the prophets had foretold the coming of Christ, the Son of God, he set the heathen Poets to bring forward a great many who should be called the sons of Jove. The Devil laying his scheme in this, to get men to imagine that the true history of Christ was of the same characters the prodigious fables related of the sons of Jove."

(snip)

"Be well assured, then, Trypho, that I am established in the knowledge of and faith in the Scriptures by those counterfeits which he who is called the devil is said to have performed among the Greeks; just as some were wrought by the Magi in Egypt, and others by the false prophets in Elijah’s days. For when they tell that Bacchus, son of Jupiter, was begotten by [Jupiter’s] intercourse with Semele, and that he was the discoverer of the vine; and when they relate, that being torn in pieces, and having died, he rose again, and ascended to heaven; and when they introduce wine into his mysteries, do I not perceive that [the devil] has imitated the prophecy announced by the patriarch Jacob, and recorded by Moses? And when they tell that Hercules was strong, and travelled over all the world, and was begotten by Jove of Alcmene, and ascended to heaven when he died, do I not perceive that the Scripture which speaks of Christ, "strong as a giant to run his race," has been in like manner imitated? And when he [the devil] brings forward Aesculapius as the raiser of the dead and healer of all diseases, may I not say that in this matter likewise he has imitated the prophecies about Christ? . . . And when I hear, Trypho, that Perseus was begotten of a virgin, I understand that the deceiving serpent counterfeited also this."

Tertullian "The devil, whose business is to pervert the truth, mimics the exact circumstances of the Divine Sacraments...Thus he celebrates the oblation of bread, and brings in the symbol of the resurrection. Let us therefore acknowledge the craftiness of the devil, who copies certain things of those that be Divine."

Clearly, these rationalizations are ridiculous

The following is from a web page named Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth:

Hundreds of years before Christianity was a twinkle in St. Paul's eye, Pagans had>

-personal Gods who care about people and help or punish them

-a single supreme God who made and controls the universe

-Gods who ascend and descend from their home up in heaven

-a soul that survives death

-eternal life after death, with torment for sinners; reward for the worthy

-the Logos, which early Christians explicitly identify as the Holy Spirit

-Gods who are Sons of the supreme God, often born of a mortal woman

-prophecy -- made and fulfilled

-miracles -- stuff like raising the dead, healing the sick, restoring sight to the blind, turning water into wine

Sorry, but it is pretty obvious that Christianity is a copycat religion.

Jimbo

[The Laughing Man]

That Minnesota uncritically swallows this tripe and then regurgitates it for everyone else is not surprising. The "copycat savior" argument has been presented many times before by others and each time, they've had their argument beaten to a pulp by apologists who know that - to alter an old saying - the God is in the details. Skeptics take dozens of myths that Christianity supposedly copycatted (every single one, amazingly enough), hyper-generalize the details and then massage the result to supposedly fit Christianity. Of course, one could do this with many other things, too. One memorable and amusing one that I think J.P. Holding came up with showed that Abraham Lincoln was a myth based on John F. Kennedy.

[mossrose]

The earliest Christians saw the similarities of their religion to earlier religions and they invented a term to help explain it. They described the similarities between Christianity and earlier religions as "diabolical mimicry" which they attributed to Satan. They believed-or at least they tried to promote the idea-that Satan had anticipated Christianity and had created all these similar earlier religions to try to confuse Christians and cause them to lose their faith.

No really, this is what they tried to claim.

One of the things that modern Christians do when they are faced with this problem is to split hairs. For example, they will say that, gee whiz, this earlier godman did not die on a cross but on a tree, or this earlier godman did not perform the exact same miracles in the exact same order that Jesus did, or this earlier godman died as a sacrifice to wipe aways sins, but did not actually rise from the dead like Jesus, or this godman's death and resurection was tied to the agricultural cycles, while Jesus' death and resurrection was not, etc., etc., ad nauseum. These Christians will quibble over minor details, ignoring or denying the glaringly obvious parallels between these earlier religions and Christianity. But of course, as committed Christians, they cannot admit that their religion is a bogus imitation of earlier religions.

Here are some comments from Justin Martyr as well as one from Tertullian, two early Christian apologists who had to do quite a bit of tap-dancing to explain away the obvious similarities between their johnny-come-lately religion and all the already established religions:

Justin Martyr "ANALOGIES TO THE HISTORY OF CHRIST. And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; Aesculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars? And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre?"

(snip)

"As to the objection of our Jesus’s being crucified, I say, that suffering was common to all the aforementioned sons of Jove [Jupiter] . . . As to his being born of a virgin, you have your Perseus to balance that. As to his curing the lame, and the paralytic, and such as were cripples from birth, this is little more than what you say of your Aesculapius."

(snip)

"It having reached the Devil’s ears that the prophets had foretold the coming of Christ, the Son of God, he set the heathen Poets to bring forward a great many who should be called the sons of Jove. The Devil laying his scheme in this, to get men to imagine that the true history of Christ was of the same characters the prodigious fables related of the sons of Jove."

(snip)

"Be well assured, then, Trypho, that I am established in the knowledge of and faith in the Scriptures by those counterfeits which he who is called the devil is said to have performed among the Greeks; just as some were wrought by the Magi in Egypt, and others by the false prophets in Elijah’s days. For when they tell that Bacchus, son of Jupiter, was begotten by [Jupiter’s] intercourse with Semele, and that he was the discoverer of the vine; and when they relate, that being torn in pieces, and having died, he rose again, and ascended to heaven; and when they introduce wine into his mysteries, do I not perceive that [the devil] has imitated the prophecy announced by the patriarch Jacob, and recorded by Moses? And when they tell that Hercules was strong, and travelled over all the world, and was begotten by Jove of Alcmene, and ascended to heaven when he died, do I not perceive that the Scripture which speaks of Christ, "strong as a giant to run his race," has been in like manner imitated? And when he [the devil] brings forward Aesculapius as the raiser of the dead and healer of all diseases, may I not say that in this matter likewise he has imitated the prophecies about Christ? . . . And when I hear, Trypho, that Perseus was begotten of a virgin, I understand that the deceiving serpent counterfeited also this."

Tertullian "The devil, whose business is to pervert the truth, mimics the exact circumstances of the Divine Sacraments...Thus he celebrates the oblation of bread, and brings in the symbol of the resurrection. Let us therefore acknowledge the craftiness of the devil, who copies certain things of those that be Divine."

What a ridiculous rationalization.

The following is from a web page named Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth:

Hundreds of years before Christianity was a twinkle in St. Paul's eye, Pagans had>

-personal Gods who care about people and help or punish them

-a single supreme God who made and controls the universe

-Gods who ascend and descend from their home up in heaven

-a soul that survives death

-eternal life after death, with torment for sinners; reward for the worthy

-the Logos, which early Christians explicitly identify as the Holy Spirit

-Gods who are Sons of the supreme God, often born of a mortal woman

-prophecy -- made and fulfilled

-miracles -- stuff like raising the dead, healing the sick, restoring sight to the blind, turning water into wine

Sorry, but it is pretty obvious that Christianity is a copycat religion.

Jimbo

Uh-huh. And Jimbo has swallowed the lie. Hook, line, and sinker. Because, "heaven forbid" that we should believe Scripture, but it is fine to believe everything else we read written by men. Obviously everything EXCEPT Scripture is truth.

Harpur is an idiot. A Canadian idiot, to boot.

Rave on, the rest of you.

[Xavier]

Sorry, but it is pretty obvious that Christianity is a copycat religion.

Jimbo

But don't worry... Lincoln didn't exist either...

[truthman]

Minnesota, were you there when George Washington was inaugurated?

truthman

[The Laughing Man]

Uh-huh. And Jimbo has swallowed the lie. Hook, line, and sinker.

He's a skeptic. What do you expect?

Harpur is an idiot. A Canadian idiot, to boot.

The worst type of idiot!

[jimbo]

To those Christians who are dismissing this subject without addressing it directly,

Why did the earliest Christian apologists have to invent explanations for the similarities between Chrisianity and the already established religions? Why were they forced to do this, do you think?

Mossrose,

Uh-huh. And Jimbo has swallowed the lie. Hook, line, and sinker.

So do you believe that Satan created these earlier religions as "diabolical mimicry" as these early Christian apologists claimed?

Jimbo