Re: Jesus and other saviors/heroes
Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 9:55 pm
I think it depends on the situation. If a bunch of other president's deaths had parallels then I would start to think maybe they weren't just coincidences. But when you find these motifs in all the Ancient Near Eastern religions I think there's some influencing going on. I suspect that these motifs have an esoteric meaning to them.GakuseiDon wrote: ↑Tue Sep 18, 2018 3:31 pm 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/
I think Christianity started from Jewish scriptures but also incorporated Greco-Roman religion. I see the Jewish scriptures as the "base" that Christianity was built on. I think by the time of Paul's letters Greco-Roman mystery cult influences have already been added. I think it was very easy to make the suffering servant in Isaiah into a dying and resurrecting mystery savior. This quote from Richard Carrier's Wikipedia page pretty much sums up what I think happened https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C ... syncretismIf 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.
Carrier notes four major trends in religion, occurring prior to the formation of Christianity:
"Syncretism: combining a foreign cult deity with Hellenistic elements."[87]
"Monotheism: transforming polytheism into monotheism (via henotheism)."[87]
"Individualism: agricultural salvation cults retooled as personal salvation cults."[87]
"Cosmopolitanism: all races, cultures, classes admitted as equals, with fictive kinship (members are all “brothers”); you now “join” a religion rather than being born into it."[87]
Carrier writes that per syncretism, "Mithraism was a syncretism of Persian and Hellenistic elements; the mysteries of Isis and Osiris were a syncretism of Egyptian and Hellenistic elements. Christianity is simply a continuation of the same trend: a syncretism of Jewish and Hellenistic elements. Each of these cults is unique and different from all the others in nearly every detail—but it's the general features they all share in common that reflect the overall fad that produced them in the first place, the very features that made them popular and successful within Greco-Roman culture."[102]
Carrier contends that Christianity originated from a Jewish sect...