Jesus and other saviors/heroes

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
nightshadetwine
Posts: 253
Joined: Mon Aug 06, 2018 10:35 am

Re: Jesus and other saviors/heroes

Post by nightshadetwine »

rgprice wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 9:57 am Jesus very closely resembles figures from stories like The Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah, The Book of Enoch, Apocalypse of Zephaniah, etc.
Right, and a lot of those stories are dated around the 1st century CE. By this time there were a lot of Hellenized Jews so this is why you start seeing these Jewish stories that have Greco-Roman influences. I definitely agree that Isaiah 53 was used to turn Jesus into a dying and resurrecting savior. I think by the time of Paul mystery cult elements were added.
Turning water to wine is an invention of the author of John, as part of his "miraculous signs" narrative, which I contend, was invented by the author as an embellishment of the "miraculous signs" passage from GMark to show that the Jews were culpable for not having believed in Jesus because he had demonstrated his powers to them via "miraculous signs". Same goes with the Lazarus story, it's also a part of the "miraculous signs" narrative.
I think John created his miracle stories by using popular miracles associated with other saviors/heroes .
nightshadetwine
Posts: 253
Joined: Mon Aug 06, 2018 10:35 am

Re: Jesus and other saviors/heroes

Post by nightshadetwine »

robert j wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 10:34 am It seems that Paul, with his predilection for creative readings of the Jewish scriptures, may very well have derived those events of his Jesus Christ from Isaiah 53 ---
I definitely agree with this. I just think that by the time of Paul mystery cult elements were added. I think it was probably obvious to early Christians that the dying and resurrecting savior Jesus was very similar to the Greco-Roman saviors and mystery cults. So by the time of Paul a mystery cult had formed around Jesus.
rgprice
Posts: 2058
Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2018 11:57 pm

Re: Jesus and other saviors/heroes

Post by rgprice »

Right, but one thing to be cautious of is that many later Roman and Greek Christian apologists actually made the case that Jesus was more similar to the Greek and Roman gods than he really was in order to make the worship of Jesus seem less radical. They were like, "Oh you worship Jupiter, well, this Jesus guy is a lot like him, so worshiping Jesus should be no big deal." So that was one line of argument that some Christians used to try and convince pagans to adopt the worship of Jesus. So this is one of the things that has led to an overstatement of the influence of "pagan gods" on the Jesus narrative.

What influence there was, was heavily filtered through Jewish lenses already. The problem I have is when people, like Freke and Gandy, try to claim that the Jesus story is just straight cribbed from the a story about Dionysus, or something like that. That's not how it is. Any pagan influence, and really IMO its less mythical influence than philosophical, had been subtly infused into Jewish story telling over hundreds of years and had been heavily imbued with Jewish characteristics.

A lot of the 1st century BCE - 1st century CE stories were heavily influenced by the Jewish condition of oppression and occupation, so that's why there are a lot of stories about martyrdom and death and resurrection. Indeed it was really Jews who had a narrative that made the most sense for the death and resurrection stories, as their states and cultures had been destroyed and come back many times.
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8798
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: Jesus and other saviors/heroes

Post by MrMacSon »

rgprice wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 11:57 am
... Any pagan influence, and really IMO its less mythical influence than philosophical, had been subtly infused into Jewish story telling over hundreds of years and had been heavily imbued with Jewish characteristics.

A lot of the 1st century BCE - 1st century CE stories were heavily influenced by the Jewish condition of oppression and occupation, so that's why there are a lot of stories about martyrdom and death and resurrection. Indeed it was really Jews who had a narrative that made the most sense for the death and resurrection stories, as their states and cultures had been destroyed and come back many times.
Certainly Judaism had been influenced by its own conditions and experiences and by religions around them, and Jewish narratives about anticipated messianism were increasing by the mid first century AD/CE, as were resurrection narratives. N.T. Wright documents Jewish resurrection narratives in The Resurrection of the Son of God --

But the key question which the Sadducees pressed on the Pharisees (and, it appears, on Jesus) was: can you find resurrection in the Torah itself, in the narrowest sense of the five books of Moses?

The answer was an emphatic 'Yes - once you know what you are looking for'. The main Talmudic discussion (Sanhedrin 90-92) offers plenty of examples. Gamaliel II (late first century) is cited as using Deuteronomy 31:16 where YHWH promises Moses that he will sleep with his fathers and rise .. The same text is used by Gamaliel's contemporary Joshuah ben Hananiah ...

In the same passage, Gamiel II rehearses texts from the prophets and writings as well (Isaiah 26, an obvious passage; Song of Songs 7:10, less obvious to us, but speaking of people whose lips move during sleep) ... Gamaliel then returns to Deuteronomy, this time to 11:9 since YHWH swore to the patriarchs that he would give the land to them, not merely to their descendants, the oath could only be fulfilled by their being raised from the dead.

Gamaliel cites
  • Deut 11.9 where YHWH would return the land to the patriarchs and their descendants upon their being raised from the dead ...
  • Deut 33:29 (YHWH declares, 'I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal') and Deut 33:6 ('may Reuben live, and not die out').
  • Psalm 50:4 "for the purposes of judgment God will summon both ['the soul presently in heaven, and the body on earth'] to come back together" exemplifies the kind of reading that was employed from the Pharisaic period onwards.

But Judaism was not universal, and may never have been. Hence the increasing sectarianism within it- especially in Iudæa, Galilee, and wider Judea - in the first half of the first century AD/CE, leading to the Roman crackdown and the first Jewish-Roman War. And Judaism had been increasingly 'hellenized', seemingly more so in Alexandria.

The distress of the destruction of the Temple, and the abomination of the inability to rebuild it after the second Roman-Jewish War, would have challenged many Jews theologically (essentially their only or at least their predominant philosophy).

rgprice wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 11:57 am Right, but one thing to be cautious of is that many later Roman and Greek Christian apologists actually made the case that Jesus was more similar to the Greek and Roman gods than he really was in order to make the worship of Jesus seem less radical.
There is likely to have been a number of scenarios that would have varied from place to place in the eastern Mediterranean. It was a stir-fry of religions in the first and second centuries CE that became a melting pot of religions. The shipping trade was spreading many of them around, especially the Egyptian mystery religions.
nightshadetwine
Posts: 253
Joined: Mon Aug 06, 2018 10:35 am

Re: Jesus and other saviors/heroes

Post by nightshadetwine »

rgprice wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 11:57 am Right, but one thing to be cautious of is that many later Roman and Greek Christian apologists actually made the case that Jesus was more similar to the Greek and Roman gods than he really was in order to make the worship of Jesus seem less radical.
I think they were able to do that because Jesus is very similar to Greek and Roman gods. Pretty much every mythological motif in the Jesus stories are found in Greco-Roman religions. It seems that some people saw Christianity as a mystery cult when it first became known.

From "Reading Dionysus: Euripides’ Bacchae and the Cultural Contestations of Greeks, Jews, Romans, and Christians" by Courtney Friesen:
Early observers of Christianity also noted its resemblances with Dionysiac religion. Pliny the Younger, for example, the earliest extant writer on Christianity, in his famous letter to Emperor Trajan in 112 CE (Ep. 10.96), describes Christian activities in Bithynia and requests the emperor’s advice on how to proceed. Robert Grant has argued that Pliny’s account is significantly shaped by the description of the Bacchanalia affair written by Livy, whom Pliny was known to have read and admired. As in Livy, the Christians meet at night, they sing hymns and take oaths, and they share a common meal (Ep. 10.96.7; Livy 39.8, 18). Moreover, contrary to accepted social and religious practice, as in Livy, participants include a mixture of class, gender, and age, and come from both the city and the country (Ep. 10.96.9; Livy 39.8-9). Jean-Marie Pailler builds on these observations, arguing that in addition to the verbal parallels adduced by Grant, there are wider similarities in the manner in which Pliny conducted his investigation. His request for direction in policy from the emperor is analogous to that of the consul’s relationship with the Senate in Livy; his question as to whether Christians should be punished because of the name itself (nomen ipsum) or only for offences committed (flagitia, 10.96.2) follows the distinction made by Livy in the prosecution of the Bacchanalia affair between those who were merely initiated (initiati erant) and those who committed actual crimes (39.18.3-4). In addition, Pailler argues that Pliny’s description of the Christians’ folly appears “bien ‘bachique’”: “Others were of the same madness” (Fuerunt alii similis amentiae, 10.96.4). If the thesis of Grant and Pailler is correct,then Pliny’s Epistles 10.96 indicates that at least one early observer of Christians—the earliest extant example—interpreted their religious behaviors in close connection to Dionysiac mystery cults. In the following chapter, we will see that this perception continues with Celsus who, writing about six decades later, similarly compares Christianity with Dionysiac mystery cults and contrasts Jesus with Dionysus.
From "Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey" By Mark Allan Powell:
After all, Christianity was regarded as a mystery religion by some Romans when it first appeared on the scene...
The problem I have is when people, like Freke and Gandy, try to claim that the Jesus story is just straight cribbed from the a story about Dionysus, or something like that.
I think some people take it too far but I do think there are parts of the gospels that are taken from pagan myths. For example, I think the wine miracle in John was taken from Dionysus myths.

From "Reading Dionysus: Euripides’ Bacchae and the Cultural Contestations of Greeks, Jews, Romans, and Christians" by Courtney Friesen
A juxtaposition of Jesus and Dionysus is also invited in the New Testament Gospel of John, in which the former is credited with a distinctively Dionysiac miracle in the wedding at Cana: the transformation of water into wine (2:1-11). In the Hellenistic world, there were many myths of Dionysus' miraculous production of wine, and thus, for a polytheistic Greek audience, a Dionysiac resonance in Jesus' wine miracle would have been unmistakable. To be sure, scholars are divided as to whether John's account is inspired by a polytheistic legend; some emphasize rather it's affinity with the Jewish biblical tradition. In view of the pervasiveness of Hellenism, however, such a distinction is likely not sustainable. Moreover, John's Gospel employs further Dionysiac imagery when Jesus later declares, "I am the true vine". John's Jesus, thus, presents himself not merely as a "New Dionysus," but one who supplants and replaces him.
robert j
Posts: 1007
Joined: Tue Jan 28, 2014 5:01 pm

Re: Jesus and other saviors/heroes

Post by robert j »

deleted by author
Last edited by robert j on Tue Sep 18, 2018 1:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8798
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: Jesus and other saviors/heroes

Post by MrMacSon »

nightshadetwine wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 11:27 am ... I just think that by the time of Paul mystery cult elements were added. I think it was probably obvious to early Christians that the dying and resurrecting savior [Jesus] was very similar to the Greco-Roman saviors and mystery cults. So by the time of Paul a mystery cult had formed [around Jesus].
I think the Paul cult was a nebulous Christ cult initially, and the Jesus name and elements could well have been added later.

I agree with r.g.price that G.Mark was based on the Pauline texts, but it is a question of when either were finalised as we know them today. I think the Pauline narratives and texts were post bar-Kochba, as Paul is tied to Luke (in and via in Acts of the Apostles), and Luke is tied to Marcion.

... it is a fairly common, although not uncontested, opinion that Luke would have read another historical source central to us: the chronicles of Flavius Josephus, and in particular his Antiquities of the Jews (which, if true, would push the writing of Luke and Acts into the 90s, at least). For one, there are a couple of episodes described by both Luke-Acts and Josephus, where the accounts are decidedly similar (see, for instance, the description of the death of Agrippa I), but more important are the similarities in themes, vocabulary, and literary style, and the sense that the author of Luke-Acts knows the highlights and viewpoints of Josephus’s work. As Josephus scholar Steve Mason puts it in his book Josephus and the New Testament:
  • Luke-Acts is unique among the NT writings in the extent of its affinities with Josephus’s narratives […] I cannot prove beyond doubt that Luke knew the writings of Josephus. If he did not, however, we have a nearly incredible series of coincidences, which require that Luke knew something that closely approximated Josephus’s narrative in several distinct ways. 5
Einhorn, Lena. A Shift in Time: How Historical Documents Reveal the Surprising Truth about Jesus (p. 28); Yucca Publishing.

5 Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 291– 292.
.


Matthew appears more to be directed towards the Jews, or towards Judaeo-Christians, who themselves would have some prior knowledge of Judaism, and perhaps connection to the land. It continually refers to the Old Testament, and even emphasizes that the message of Jesus is directed specifically towards Jews. The argument it has is against the mainstream faction of Judaism after the fall of Jerusalem: the Pharisees.

Einhorn, Lena. A Shift in Time: How Historical Documents Reveal the Surprising Truth about Jesus (p. 27); Yucca Publishing.

Last edited by MrMacSon on Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
nightshadetwine
Posts: 253
Joined: Mon Aug 06, 2018 10:35 am

Re: Jesus and other saviors/heroes

Post by nightshadetwine »

rgprice wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 11:57 am A lot of the 1st century BCE - 1st century CE stories were heavily influenced by the Jewish condition of oppression and occupation, so that's why there are a lot of stories about martyrdom and death and resurrection. Indeed it was really Jews who had a narrative that made the most sense for the death and resurrection stories, as their states and cultures had been destroyed and come back many times.
Some of these stories show signs of being influenced by Greco-Roman myths too. Like the Enochian stories.

From "Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East" By Jan Bremmer:
In the twentieth century, the binding of the fallen angels has regularly reminded scholars of the myth of the Titans. And indeed, the Jewish translators of the Septuagint, erudite as they were, could hardly have failed to note the vague parallels between the Titans and the gigantes they introduced into Genesis 6.4. The interpretation even gains in probability, if we remember that several scholars have also noted parallels between Prometheus' instruction of primitive men in all kinds of arts in the Prometheus Victus (454-505) and the instruction of men in technical skills and magic by the Watchers in 1 Enoch 6-7. Now the combination of the myths of Prometheus and the struggle of the Titans against Zeus in the same passage may not be accidental. The figure of an inventive Prometheus in the pseudo-Aeschylean Prometheus Vinctus was probaby modelled on Ea in Atrahasis through the mediation of the already mentioned Titanomachy. Knowledge by the authors of 1 Enoch and Jubilees, or their source, of the Greek myth of the Titans via the Titanomachy, directly or indirectly, can therefore hardly be doubted...The myth of the Titans has appeared to be an extremely interesting example of the cultural contacts in the Mediterranean. From the Hurrian and the Hittites it migrated to the Greeks who, in turn, proved to be a source of inspiration to the Jews.
From Daniel: With an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature By John Joseph Collins:
While all the apocalypses refer to a judgement, and a few describe the place of judgement (1Enoch 27) or the preparations for it (1 Enoch 53), Judgement scenes are relatively rare in the otherworldly journeys. The scene in 1 Enoch 62 conforms to the judgement scenes of the "historical" apocalypses. In Testament Of Abraham, however, an elaborate scene focuses on the judgement of individuals rather than the condemnation of peoples. Here Abel sits on a throne of Judgement. There are two recording angels, a motif reminiscent of Zecharia 3, where the angel of the Lord and Satan oppose each other at the trial of the high priest Joshua. Testament of Abraham also has the characteristically Egyptian motif of
the weighing of the souls. Antecedents for this type of judgement scene have been sought in Orphism, as reflected in Plato's Gorgias and Republic Book 10 (myth of Er) and in Egyptian tradition as represented by the Book Of The Dead of Pamonthes and the Tale of Satni-Khamois.
The "Satni-Khamois" tale he mentions is the same tales I quoted when comparing Jesus to the Egyptian hero Si-Osire. These tales also influenced some stories in Hebrew scriptures.

Traces of the Influence of Plato's Eschatological Myths in Parts of the Book of Revelation and the Book of Enoch: https://www.jstor.org/stable/282716?seq ... b_contents
User avatar
GakuseiDon
Posts: 2295
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2013 5:10 pm

Re: Jesus and other saviors/heroes

Post by GakuseiDon »

nightshadetwine wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 9:32 am
GakuseiDon wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 8:17 am Nice data! I'm looking forward to you providing evidence for the story of Jesus being influenced by stories of other saviors/heroes!
Are you not able to see all of my post?
I can, but my point was that showing parallels does not show influence. Acharya S provided parallels in myths from as far afield as South America and Japan. I very much doubt that the Jesus story got influences from there.

Snopes has an article on the coincidences between the deaths of Abraham Lincoln and JF Kennedy, where they discuss the significance of coincidences: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/linkin-kennedy/
So what are we to make of all this? How do we account for all these coincidences, no matter how superficial they may be, and why do so many people find this list so compelling?

The coincidences are easily explained as the simple product of mere chance. It’s not difficult to find patterns and similarities between any two marginally-related sets of data, and coincidences similar in number and kind can be (and have been) found between many different pairs of Presidents. Our tendency to seek out patterns wherever we can stems from our desire to make sense of our world; to maintain a feeling that our universe is orderly and can be understood. In this specific case two of our most beloved Presidents were murdered for reasons that make little or no sense to many of us, and by finding patterns in their deaths we also hope to find a larger cosmic “something” that seemingly provides some reassuring (if indefinite) rhyme or reason why these great men were prematurely snatched from our mortal sphere.
If you are looking at influences, I'd focus on the Jewish scriptures as the most likely source, and then branch out from there. Throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks won't get us far. You may well be right that a parallel is an indication of influence, but it can't be assumed.
It is really important, in life, to concentrate our minds on our enthusiasms, not on our dislikes. -- Roger Pearse
Garon
Posts: 64
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2013 8:33 am

Re: Jesus and other saviors/heroes

Post by Garon »

Get the book called, "The Book Your Church Doesn'T Want You To Read."
Tim C. Leedom.....Editor
Post Reply