16 Saviors which one is yours?

[666]

What are your opinions? Is Jesus a summary of these other saviors?

Chrishna 1200BC
Budha 500BC
Hindoo Sakia 600BC
Thammus 1160BC
Wittob 52 BC
Iqu 622 BC
Hesus 834 BC
Quexalcote 587 BC
Quirinus 506 BC
Pometheus 547 BC
Thutis 1700 BC
Indra 527 BC
Alcestos 600 BC
Atys 1170 BC
Crite 1200 BC
Bali 725 BC
Mithra 600 BC

[Don 944 LA]

<--- godless

Chrishna & Budha have some good stuff ...
what about Confucious ???

[666]

I can't say jesus walked the earth and can't say that there is no God. But I think there's more truth in the Porsche God than there is in the literal Jesus. I really like your signature, Don. Some day I'm gonna plagerise it.

[djmcmath]

Fun question. Don Richardson has a great book on the topic, "Eternity in their hearts." The fundamental premise is that there exist countless examples (as you list a few above, some of which are more analagous than others) where missionaries or explorers came upon undiscovered peoples only to find that they already knew of a God that looked remarkably like the Christian God. If you assume, as most normal people do, that such people lived their lives in complete isolation from the "Christianized" world, then they should have no such knowledge. Finding one or two such cases could be written off as coincidence, some fluke of human development that causes us to make up stories like this...... but we don't find one or two, we find dozens. Yes, that's right -- dozens of "primitive" cultures carry stories via the oral tradition of a great flood, of a single sovereign creator, and of a single saviour who would come. Obviously all of the human race started _somewhere_, and when we all parted ways, there had to have been some common stories that we all told. The fact that we all tell the same stories is a worthwhile piece in the puzzle.



Let me put it another way. You're sitting there in your office, and someone comes to you with an absurd tale about how he heard that some guy flipped his car 6 times, then crawled out and walked away from the accident. You laugh it off, because that's silly. Shortly afterwards, someone else comes up and says, "Dude, I just saw this guy flip his car 4 times! He crawled out and walked away from it!"

At what point do you come to the realization that there must be some truth behind all of this nonsense you're hearing? At what point do you say "This isn't coincidence. There must be something here?" When do you decide that truth is worth knowing?

[666]

Here's a twist. Do you think the stories may be symbolic of something else?

Say maybe, the summer & winter solstice?

To give an example;

Jesus lay dead for 3 days before being resurrected

The earths axis does not move for 3 days before going back to the summer solstice

Jesus B-Day Dec 25

Earth begins its move to the summer solstice Dec 25

[jcwade]

Jesus' B-day was in March or April @ 4 years before he was born (4BC)

The early christians co-opted the Roman winter solstice festival called the Saturnilia. After all, who doesn't want a holiday at that time of year.

The dying god stories go back long before that (you left out Osiris). Read Sir James Frazier "The Golden Bough" for an
exhaustive and scholarly work on the subject (Yeah, Right!)

Just because other cultures have similar stories doesn't necessarily make them true, it just shows that humans have a need for something "Greater" than themselves to help to explain the world around them. The majority may rule, but it isn't always right.

By the way, "The Epic of Gilgamesh" predates the story of Noah but doesn't make the story of a universal flood any more real.

john

[djmcmath]

I won't offer any argument that the date that we celebrate as Jesus' birthday is the same as holidays for other deities. I would note, however, that there's a reason for that, and it's even obvious: that date was chosen somewhat arbitrarily about 325AD, by Constantine, iirc. His concept was to take a pre-existing holiday and celebrate a religious festival on the same day.* Given that there is no evidence for any particular date of Jesus' birth, any day works as well as any other.

Um, so, sure, the 25th of December carries the significance that the solstice officially ends that day. It's also, quite arbitrarily, the day that we pay homage to capitalism by spending billions of dollars on gifts for each other. And, completely arbitrarily, it's also the day that some of us celebrate the birth of our saviour -- but we could have picked any other day, because we don't know what day he was really born on.


Your turn -- have you considered extra-biblical accounts of Jesus life, ministry, and death? What, pray tell, do you do with the account of Pliny the Elder? What do you do with the numerous martyrs -- men and women who proclaimed that they had seen the risen saviour, were given opportunity to recant, and did not? What do you do with first-hand eyewitnesses who proclaimed the story to their deaths?


Dan





*Constantine's idea is excellent, imho, with some problems as it nears its logical conclusion. If you merge other religions into the theological base of Christianity, you end up with some crazy stuff -- worshipping Mary as the goddess, paying cash sacrifices as an atonement for sins, that sort of thing.

[jcwade]

I'm not saying that there wasn't an historical person that we know as jesus. That is backed up in Roman records and in Josephus. As to the 4 BC date, that coresponds with the date of the census ordered by Augustus.

And as far as people proclaming the truth of these things to their death, There were Nazis screaming Heil Hitler as the were being hung for war crimes. (I can't wait for that to be taken out of context)

john

[djmcmath]

Many people have died for things that they knew nothing about. For example, if Muhammed -- the only Muslim who had any access to Muslim deity -- had died at swordpoint, having been given the opportunity to recant, his beliefs would carry some weight. If Joseph Smith -- the only individual who had the vision of the angel who gave him his revelation -- had died at gunpoint, having been offered the opportunity to recant, his writing would carry some weight. Had any of the fanatical followers of (insert name of arbitrary fanatical leader -- Muhammed works as well as Hitler) actually had some firsthand eyewitness reason for their death, then the analogy would fit. Even so, if only one single individual claims to have some divine insight, they can be written off as lunatics, quite frankly.

The ones I'm pointing to are specifically the ones who had seen Jesus alive after he had been crucified. Those people had everything to lose, nothing to gain, and they knew from personal experience what the truth was. They did not trust someone else's words, they were not misled or drugged into some wild fanatical state. They died for testifying about what they had seen personally with their own two eyes, having been given the opportunity to recant.

That carries some weight.

[djmcmath]

PS -- yes, of course -- 4BC is historically accurate. The question that we don't know the answer to is what _day_ in that year it was. Dec 25th works as well as any other.

[stuartj]

[stuartj]

There is only one god, and these are his true representitives on earth.



The god bidnes is good bidnes. Why should Rome have all the fun?

http://www.iconbusters.com/iconbusters/docs/letter/letter.htm

[white87911]

I we are all God's children, what makes Jesus so special?????????????????????

[Jared at Pelican Parts]

Siddartha/Buddha seems to make the most sense to me....

[djmcmath]

Jared -- would you mind explaining? I confess to knowing very little about Siddartha. TIA,

Dan

[jcwade]

On the contrary, they had everything to gain (heaven as they knew it) and everything to lose (control over a small but fanatical group of followers..excuse me if this sounds vaguely familiar)

Just because someone said that they saw something does that make it true? The facts are obscursed by 2000 years of history. And also by 2000 years of people having a reason to say that these things happened. Self interest and the BIG LIE ( to quote our communist brethren) tend to overwhelm facts.

john

[djmcmath]

John -- I'll quote from a previous thread on the topic.

Simon Greenleaf makes this point best. Greenleaf was a Professor of Law at Harvard. You may have heard of his Treatise on the Law of Evidence. In An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice, he does just what the title says. Here's a good quote:

The great truths which the apostles declared, were, that Christ had risen from the dead, and that only through repentance from sin, and faith in Him, could men hope for salvation. This doctrine they asserted with one voice, everywhere, not only under the greatest discouragements, but in the face of the most appalling errors that can be presented to the mind of man. Their master had recently perished as a malefactor, by the sentence of a public tribunal. His religion sought to overthrow the religions of the whole world. The laws of every country were against the teachings of His disciples. The interests and passions of all the rulers and great men in the world were against them. The fashion of the world was against then.
Propagating this new faith, even in the most inoffensive and peaceful manner, they could expect nothing but contempt, opposition, reviling, bitter persecutions, stripes, imprisonments, torments, and cruel deaths. Yet this faith they zealously did propagate; and all these miseries they endured undismayed, nay rejoicing. As one after another was put to a miserable death, the survivors only prosecuted their work with increased vigor and resolution. The annals of military warfare afford scarcely an example of the like heroic constancy, patience, and unblenching courage. They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidences of the great facts and truths which they asserted; and these motives were pressed upon their attention with the most melancholy and terrific frequency.
It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have narrated, had not Jesus actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact. If it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this matter, every human motive operated to lead them to discover and avow their error. To have persisted in so gross a falsehood, after it was known to them, was not only to encounter, for life, all the evils which man could inflict, from without, but to endure also the pangs of inward and conscious guilt; with not hope of future peace, no testimony of a good conscience, no expectation of honor or esteem among men, no hope of happiness in this life, or in the world to come.
... If then their tesimony was not true, there was no possible motive for its fabrication. (Greenleaf, 28-30).

You asked...

[M.D. Holloway]

666: reality is an agreed upon truth - the town you live in exists because enough people agree that it is on certain longitude & latitude, same can be said for the color blue. You cannot show me blue but you can show me something colored blue. We all agree, for the most part what blue is. Is not God of the same?

Jesus is the uniting of God to man at a time when faith was detached from man or placed on idols. The Christ brought God to man and sacrificed himself for that cause. Now then - is it true? Did a man walk earth who was the Christ? Does it matter? Does the physicality really matter? The spirit and the message is just. The concept lives on...

If we believe in the Christ's teachings as well as the teachings of Lao Tzu (Taoism) and Sidhartha Gautama of the Sakyas (Buddhism) both of which complement Christianity very nicely, then aren't we living a life on compliment?

Or, perhaps I will put it this way, your best buddy tells you a great story. He has you in stitches. Does it matter if it really happened? Not really. Why can't religion be of the same nature - it is poetry and art and faith.

Mercy is the hope that God is the creator tomorrow...

BTW: stop hiding.

[stuartj]

Certainly an interesting argument from the Professor. He is saying that the truths declared must have been so because the propogaters of said truths were ultimately prepared to die wretched deaths in support of those truths.

History is littered with matyrs prepared to die miserbale deaths for delusional truths. A practice alive and well this very today.

I may say tho, Shadowfax, you have lifed the bar with that citation. Very impressive indeed.

[djmcmath]

The difference, Stu, is that these guys knew the truth. Not second-hand knowledge, not "Some guy told me such-and-such, so I know it's true," but first-hand "I was there" truth. That's what sets them apart from, say, the Nazi screaming "Heil Hitler" as he is hung. (That, and the fact that a Nazi being hung for his war crimes doesn't really have the opportunity to recant.)

Dan