Resource for Mythicist and Response Documentation

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
nightshadetwine
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Re: Resource for Mythicist and Response Documentation

Post by nightshadetwine »

Chris Hansen wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 4:45 pm Actually, it does matter. Egyptians did not conceptualize him as living in the same way a person was. He was living in his own right, but not the same as a human on earth. It is well worth noting because this is on conflict juxtaposition to how Jesus rises. Jesus is alive in every way we are to Christians, he humanly resurrects on Earth.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. You're saying a deity isn't actually "risen" or "resurrected" because they weren't resurrected in the exact way Jesus was. This is completely irrelevant, it doesn't matter if it's not exactly the same. Although the resurrection texts do describe the deceased being resurrected very similar to Jesus. They're said to get up, shake off the dirt/dust and bandages, and ascend out of their tomb to the sky "Just like Osiris". So even if Osiris wasn't resurrected in the same way Jesus was, the people who are ritually identified with Osiris are resurrected like Jesus. They're literally described in the texts as getting up and ascending to the sky. That's how they got to the netherworld, by ascending to the sky.

So it doesn't matter if you personally don't think Osiris was "resurrected" or "risen" because the Egyptians did. To the Egyptians, Osiris completely conquered and overcame death. This is why they hoped to share in his resurrection. It's the same concept as Jesus.
Also you don't need to block quote at me. I've read all the books you've cited and have them on my shelves.

I'd add Osiris is such a huge problem not even Mettinger considers him a dying-rising god as of 2004.
I "block quote" you because it sounds like you need to re-read those books. You don't seem to understand that Osiris was resurrected and risen according to the ancient Egyptians. It doesn't matter what you or Mettinger think about Osiris, it's what the Egyptians thought about Osiris. He was a "risen" deity that overcame death and offered them salvation.
Chrissy Hansen
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Re: Resource for Mythicist and Response Documentation

Post by Chrissy Hansen »

nightshadetwine wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 9:47 pm This is exactly what I'm talking about. You're saying a deity isn't actually "risen" or "resurrected" because they weren't resurrected in the exact way Jesus was. This is completely irrelevant, it doesn't matter if it's not exactly the same. Although the resurrection texts do describe the deceased being resurrected very similar to Jesus. They're said to get up, shake off the dirt/dust and bandages, and ascend out of their tomb to the sky "Just like Osiris". So even if Osiris wasn't resurrected in the same way Jesus was, the people who are ritually identified with Osiris are resurrected like Jesus. They're literally described in the texts as getting up and ascending to the sky. That's how they got to the netherworld, by ascending to the sky.

So it doesn't matter if you personally don't think Osiris was "resurrected" or "risen" because the Egyptians did. To the Egyptians, Osiris completely conquered and overcame death. This is why they hoped to share in his resurrection. It's the same concept as Jesus.
Also you don't need to block quote at me. I've read all the books you've cited and have them on my shelves.

I'd add Osiris is such a huge problem not even Mettinger considers him a dying-rising god as of 2004.
I "block quote" you because it sounds like you need to re-read those books. You don't seem to understand that Osiris was resurrected and risen according to the ancient Egyptians. It doesn't matter what you or Mettinger think about Osiris, it's what the Egyptians thought about Osiris. He was a "risen" deity that overcame death and offered them salvation.
1) Incorrect. I'm saying what it means to "rise" or "resurrect" is culturally specific and therefore, the fact that a myth seems similar on the surface has no bearing on whether or not it constitutes the *same* or a *parallel* myth elsewhere. Also the resurrection texts do not literally think that he will physically get up... they were well aware that this is not the same as Jesus, because they continued moving the mummies around. Again, that a text says something in narrative does not actually mean that we should take it as a literal belief. The description does not indicate the intricacy of belief. Yes, Osiris conquered and overcame death to the Egyptians. But how he did that is culturally specific and distinct.

2) I completely understand there is a difference between a text description in myth, and how Egyptians literally believed. They knew their kings did not physically get up in this life. They did so in the *afterlife* (this is also why the *dead* king is identified with Osiris directly, whereas the successor becomes identified with Horus).

3) He was a deity who overcame death by being alive in death. That is why I say Egyptian resurrection is culturally specific. As Burkert noted, it was a "transcendent life beyond death." In his death, he gains life and so simultaneously is dead and alive, transcending death and overcoming it, while also embodying it. Thus, the dead king is identified with Osiris to come to a transcendent life, while the living king is with Horus. I'd add that Metzger was able to demonstrate that during the time of Christianity, Egyptians clearly believed that Osiris' body was buried in Egypt somewhere (identifying some 20 locations associated with it, actually). Thus, the idea he was bodily resurrected in a physical earthly sense is nuts, demonstrating that there is divide between ritual text (the Pyramid Texts) and actual beliefs. Rituals are often mythologized, but are not direct 1 to 1 beliefs of what happened. We see this same thing in magical texts as well (such as the PGM series) and with propaganda pieces (Marduk Ordeal Text). The mere fact that you can point around to narratives means very little if you aren't applying any critical theory or method and examining what Egyptians actually believed, because myths and narratives are actually widely debated as to whether they represent beliefs... which everyone with a PhD in religious studies has long recognized. My entire point is that while they believed he rose, the narratives we have do not necessarily (in fact we know they don't) have a direct correspondence to what Egyptians believed, especially when we look at text genres. Ritual texts function through a huge amount of metaphor and creative writing, as the Pyramid Texts do. But it is clear from other texts we have, that they did not literally think that a dead king got up and walked around... kind of hard to think that if you are moving their corpse around to safer locations.

Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley: University of California Press, paperback 1982) 101

Tryggve Mettinger, Reviewed Work(s): Quando un dio muore: Morti e assenze divine nelle antiche tradizioni mediterranee by Paolo Xella, History of Religions 43.4 (2004)

Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948) 185

Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Mythology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 7, 16, and 156

Bruce Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian (Leiden: Brill, 1968) 21
Chrissy Hansen
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Re: Resource for Mythicist and Response Documentation

Post by Chrissy Hansen »

Again, I'm not denying that Osiris is thought to rise again. I'm saying that what it means to "rise" is culturally specific, and because of that we cannot hypostatize him into a category with other gods, because we are not seeing the same phenomenon. We are seeing culturally specific *phenomena*.
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Joseph D. L.
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Re: Resource for Mythicist and Response Documentation

Post by Joseph D. L. »

Chris Hansen wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 4:45 pm
Joseph D. L. wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 4:44 pm So far I'm not impressed with anything he's had to say. Just the typical collage student who thinks he knows more than someone else, because he went to collage.
Then go away and stop bothering me, because I'm not impressed with someone whose only tactic is amateurish parallelomania.
Guy I don't know where you think you are but no one here has to do anything you have to say. If you can't handle criticism then you best be going elsewhere.

Also, "I'm not impressed with someone whose only tactic is amateurish parallelomania."

Just lol man. Only? Not only is that not my main field of interest, it's not even a major component to my theories.
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Joseph D. L.
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Re: Resource for Mythicist and Response Documentation

Post by Joseph D. L. »

Chris Hansen wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 4:59 pm
Joseph D. L. wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 4:42 pm
And yes, Osiris was believed to be bodily reconstituted. There is no rejecting that. But is that body alive the same way a human person is? No. It is alive in the afterlife, it is alive but represented as a green mummy, it is alive AND dead. As Frankfort pointed out, Osiris was paradoxical as both a living and dead deity simultaneously.
Did you not even read the scholars and the primary sources I quoted that emphatically said that Osiris is resurrected?

The Egyptian afterlife wasn't a parallel dimension. It was the same, corporal world that everything exists in. The mummy is used, so that the deceased may resurrect in his physical body.
... yes... in the afterlife...
The afterlife is THIS WORLD, fool. It's why the deceased is commanded to wake up and stand up. It's why Osiris is commanded in the Pyramid Texts to sit on his throne again.
And I've read literally every single book and source you cited cover to cover. Literally every single one.
I don't believe you at all.
Last edited by Joseph D. L. on Wed Jul 01, 2020 10:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Joseph D. L.
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Re: Resource for Mythicist and Response Documentation

Post by Joseph D. L. »

Chris Hansen wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 5:04 pm Also if my ideas were "pseudo-philosophical" I wonder why they are the consensus of scholars of religion... like with Russell McCutcheon. There is a reason the dying-rising god has only survived in Biblical studies and basically nowhere else at all... because Bible scholarship (like mythicists as a whole) are exceedingly slow and outdated on method.
Because I'm not interested in what Biblical scholars have to say about Egyptian beliefs and practices. If you want to know about Egypt then read Egyptologists. They actually know what they're talking about, and all say that Osiris was believed to be bodily resurrected.

smh.
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Joseph D. L.
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Re: Resource for Mythicist and Response Documentation

Post by Joseph D. L. »


The Pyramid Texts contain the oldest available references to mouth-opening rites in Egypt. These are royal texts dating from the Old Kingdom composed of a funerary ritual of mortuary offerings, connected with the corporeal reconstitution, resurrection, spiritualization and deification of the deceased king, and involving magical apotropaic formulae, mythical formulae identifying the deceased king with certain deities, prayer and petitions on behalf of the deceased king and proclamations of his heavenly transfiguration and greatness. …

It is succeeded by a multitude of Utterances, for example, endowing the deceased with charms to ward off serpents on his way through the chthonic realm (Ut. 226-43), powers and aids in the encounter with the ferryman (Ut. 300-311, 503-522), celebrating his rebirth, resurrection, ascension, transfiguration and life as a God in Heaven (Ut. 529-90), trailing off with addresses to the deceased king as a God (Ut. 690; cf. Mercer 1952: I, ix-xi).

Dr. Gregory Yuri Glazov, The Bridling of the Tongue and the Opening of the Mouth in Biblical Prophecy


With this idea of bodily resurrection we reach perhaps the most ancient stratum of the Egyptian conception of the afterlife, that is, a continuation of life as a physical corporeality – a conception common to other religions at the earliest stage of their belief in survival. Certainly long before the period of the Pyramid Texts speculative theologians first attempted to elaborate this primitive belief in bodily survival by differentiating more precisely between various forms of existence in the hereafter: an effective body, an Akh, a Ba as well as other transformations the deceased could undergo. “The Akh (belongs) to heaven, the corpse (belongs) to the earth” is an emphatic statement indicating an advanced stage of this differentiation. It is to be remembered, however, that at all stages the body of the deceased was considered not as inert and lifeless matter but as a living entity which, with all its physical and psychic faculties, fully lived in all other forms of transformation and without the effective role of which no continuation of life could be conceived. Truly, then, the Egyptian concept of man in his afterlife knew nothing of his “spiritual” constituents as opposed to his physical ones.

Dr. Louis V. Žabkar, A Study of the Ba Concept in Ancient Egyptian Texts,


My bones have been given to me by those who are in Djedu, my members have been strengthened by those who are in Khem, my bones have been brought to me, my members have been raised up.

Coffin Texts, Spell 456 V, 328-29[138]
Djedu and Khem were cities in Egypt, here on earth in the world of the living, and thus it was in this world of the living that this resurrection was thought to have taken place.

D.N. Boswell, The BODILY resurrection of Osiris HERE on earth, https://mythodoxy.wordpress.com/2014/12 ... of-osiris/

So stfu.
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Joseph D. L.
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Re: Resource for Mythicist and Response Documentation

Post by Joseph D. L. »

Osiris was physically resurrected.

The afterlife WAS this life.

There was no dualistic concept of body/spirit in Egypt. Everything was material, the body, the Ba, the Ka, and the Akh.

Ta-Amen, the Duat, and the Imperishable Stars, were actual, physical locations, not parallel dimensions.

And you don't know what you're talking about.

These are all facts.
Chrissy Hansen
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Re: Resource for Mythicist and Response Documentation

Post by Chrissy Hansen »

I never said they weren't physical locations... I said they were in a different realm but clearly you don't know the first thing about cosmology so this will be like talking to a brick wall with a narcissism complex.

Nothing you brought up actually invalidates what I said.

But anyone who cites the likes Boswell for their information probably hasn't actually consulted the Egyptologists but is doing what you are: quote mining. Anyone who thinks that Duat is on Earth does not know the first thing about Egyptian cosmology and has obviously never read the books or articles he cites.

Not worth the time it takes to spell your name.
Last edited by Chrissy Hansen on Fri Nov 06, 2020 12:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Chrissy Hansen
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Re: Resource for Mythicist and Response Documentation

Post by Chrissy Hansen »

I won't be replying to you at all from here on out. I have things to do, like reading books in their entirety and not cherry picked fragments.
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