Coincidence or conspiracy?

[cleanhippie]

I'd like to hear from our christian DUers on how one reconciles these similarities.

[Angry Dragon]

1. Horus was the first son and Jesus was the second coming

[Teamster Jeff]

2. Some of the same myths get passed on over time

from culture to culture. There are many versions of the Christian creation story also, all almost identical.

An awesome read: "Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers" by Joseph Campbell

[lumberingbear]

3. Power of the Myth ....

got me started looking at things with a open mind when I was in my twenties. So glad I read it.

[raven42]

4. Does anyone have some links where

I could look into some of these parallels further? I've read some things in the past (from Christian sources) that claim the parallels between Horus, Mithras, etc. and the Jesus story are overblown. It's hard to know what to believe. But I find the whole thing fascinating, so it would be nice to read some actual primary sources, rather than just secondary summaries of the parallels.

[DavidL]

5. Heavily footnoted PDF

http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/originsofchristianity.pdf

History and Positions of the Debate

This controversy has existed from the very beginning, and the writings of the Church fathers themselves reveal that they were constantly forced by the Pagan intelligentsia to defend what the non-Christians and other Christians ("heretics&quot alike saw as a preposterous and fabricated yarn with absolutely no evidence of it ever having taken place in history.

As Rev. Dr. Robert Taylor says, "And from the apostolic age downwards, in a never interrupted succession, but never so strongly and emphatically as in the most primitive times, was the existence of Christ as a man most strenuously denied." According to these learned dissenters, the New Testament could rightly be called, "Gospel Fictions."

For the rest, please see Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ ebook.

Now available on Kindle, IPhone, IPod, IPad, Blackberry, etc.!

Also see: http://www.truthbeknown.com/origins.htm#.UILvUsWHKSo

[raven42]

6. Thanks.

The article looks interesting. I'll look it over in more detail later when I have the chance.

[DavidL]

7. There's dozens of footnotes and many of them

will lead you to scholarly research.

I've read that one before, can't remember others I got to a few years back, but that one is on the internet.

Actually, several former theologians and divinity experts have become non-Christians as a result of their own scholarly research, indicating that there's a body of material out there which indicates that the successful development of the Christian faith was somewhat an accident of rather fortunate history for Christian believers, a Christian faith based upon previous mythological stories from older, non-Christian "faiths".

A study of history from the alleged time of the birth or crucifiction of a Jesus Christ involves as many twists and turns and fortunate accidents of history as does the history of Homo sapiens themselves, over the previous roughly 200 thousand years. To put it in the most stark of terms, Homo sapiens survived over other sub-species because conditions of climate, geography, interplaying with the Homo sapiens species. Likewise, the survival of Christian beliefs over any other belief systems in modern man, (over Jewish, over Greek, Norse, or Native American or other mythologies, had more to do with accidents of history, ( e.g., Christian settlers in North America had guns and immunity to some diseases, Native Americans, by contrast, had bows and arrows and no such acquired immunities, for example). We might well be praying to a Native American god of thunder as we are praying to the Christian god, father of Jesus, were it not for the confluence of history. Christianity and Judaism and Islam and a few others exist, all as good fortune accidents of history, accidents that enable THEIR system of mythological beliefs to overpower other systems of mythological beliefs that preceded them.

[struggle4progress]

10. "Acharya" is one of the biggest bullshitters imaginable

[DavidL]

16. Do you have any evidence? or

Are we all just supposed to believe whatever you say because you said it?

[struggle4progress]

18. It's scarcely worth an exhaustive debunking, so let's just take a quick indicative peek:

"Acharya" wants to cite "scholar of Buddhism and Sanskrit Dr. Christian Lindtner" as telling us "Everything that Jesus says or does was already said or done by the Buddha" and in particular "It was king Gautama — not Jesus — who was crucified"

The proof of that last statement, for "Acharya", is given in the footnote "In private correspondence, Dr. Lindtner informed me that there were three sources for the crucifixion story of Buddha: the Lotus sutra, the Mahaparinirvana sutra and the Samghabhedavastu"

Now, there are several points to be made:

(1) If all of the Jesus stories were versions of Buddha stories, then the whole Buddhist world would have been telling the West that continually for several hundred years, since there was certainly no less historical self-knowledge in the East than in the West

(2) The sources "Acharya" says that "Dr. Lindtner" pointed to, are not at all impossible to obtain: the Lotus Sutra (for example) is well-known and available in multiple translations -- so why not actually give us a definite reference and a quote, if the Lotus Sutra actually told us "king Gautama was crucified"? That, after all, would be the standard scholarly approach -- rather than telling someone vaguely "Look through this long text and you'll find it somewhere"

(3) But, of course, "Dr. Christian Lindtner" seems to be a man who mostly enjoys controversy: in particular, he has from time to time made a notable name for himself as a holocaust denier

Lindtner is a Danish Holocaust denier from Copenhagen University who spoke at the Iranian Holocaust denial conference on the topic “Danish media and the Holocaust”.

http://www.antisemitism.org.il/eng/Notable%20Holocaust%20deniers

[struggle4progress]

19. MAY 28-29, 2011 • AALBORG, DENMARK

A private seminar on religion and politics entitled “Revolt Against Civilization” brought together some of the leading lights of U.S. and European white nationalism and anti-Semitism. Hosted by Christian Lindtner (far right) of the Danish Society for Historical Research, the seminar was broadcast in America by Connecticut-based Voice of Reason (VOR) Radio, which specializes in racist materials. Those attending included (from left) Tomislav Sunic, a Croatian author and frequent guest speaker at American extremist events; Alexander Jacob, whose academic work focuses on a return to “European ideals” to combat Jewish intellectualism; David Duke, the U.S. neo-Nazi and former Klan leader who won a majority of the white vote in his 1991 bid to become Louisiana’s governor; Helmuth Nyborg, a Danish psychology professor; and Kevin MacDonald, a psychology professor at California State University, Long Beach, who wrote a trilogy of books that attack Jews and are revered by neo-Nazis ...

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2011/fall/the-blotter

[struggle4progress]

20. ... The most serious cases of anti-Semitism in 1998 were connected with Holocaust denial.

In late 1997 right extremists including Christian Lindtner, Ole Kreiberg and the lawyer Kund Bjeld Eriksen formed the Society for Free Historical Research. In May members of the group interrupted a lecture given at the University of Copenhagen .. by asking questions from the infamous "66 Questions and Answers about the Holocaust," and in November, they invited the Swiss Holocaust denier Jürgen Graf .. to Denmark for the second time .. Further, in January and February Lindtner published revisionist articles in the center-right newspaper Berlingske Tidende. The first was translated into German, probably by Jürgen Graf, and disseminated on the website of Nationalzeitung. The second article was an attack on the entry on Auschwitz in the Danish Encyclopedia. In it he claimed that it would have been impossible to kill so many people. Both can be found on Denmark's First Patriotic Homepage, the website of Ole Kreiberg. Lindtner, a former senior lecturer in Old Indian philology at Copenhagen University who was fired in 1992 for tax fraud, is the first Dane to have become successful in promoting Holocaust denial views ...
DENMARK 1998-9
http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw98-9/denmark.htm

[struggle4progress]

21. Aryan (Encyclopedia Brittanica)

Aryan, former name given to a people who were said to speak an archaic Indo-European language and who were thought to have settled in prehistoric times in ancient Iran and the northern Indian subcontinent. The theory of an “Aryan race” appeared in the mid-19th century and remained prevalent until the mid-20th century. According to the hypothesis, these probably light-skinned Aryans were the group who invaded and conquered ancient India from the north and whose literature, religion, and modes of social organization subsequently shaped the course of Indian culture ... http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/37468/Aryan

[struggle4progress]

22. ... A large quantity of Danish Holocaust-denial material is apparently disseminated via

the Internet. One of the principal sites is Danmarks forste patriotiske hjemmeside (Denmark's First Patriotic Homepage). Denier Christian Lintner, who has managed to get several articles published in some of Denmark's mainstream newspapers, is a contributor to this site. In his article, 'Aryan humanism', Lintner writes: 'This accusation, that "the Aryans" are somehow responsible for the so-called Holocaust of the Jews, is a very serious one indeed. If "the Aryans", or at least those in Germany, were really responsible for the abominable murder of six million Jews, who, then, must not detest the Aryan ideal of virtue? But what if the allegation is not true? In that case we must be dealing with what is surely one of the most obnoxious cases of calumny in history.' Lintner has previously received funding from the humanities branch of the Danish Research Agency to carry out research on Indian philology, despite the fact that philologists have condemned Lintner's work ...

Denmark
LATEST UPDATE: SEPTEMBER 2000
http://www.axt.org.uk/antisem/countries/denmark/denmark.htm

[struggle4progress]

23. Revolt against Civilization: Presentation by Christian Lindtner

June 21, 2011
Christian Lindtner at 'RevoltAgainstCivilization', 2011

“Jewish Propaganda among the Ancient Greeks,” by Dr. Christian Lindtner ...

http://reasonradionetwork.com/20110621/revolt-against-civilization-presentation-by-christian-lindtner

[DavidL]

33. Perhaps you need to get up to speed.. please read on

An Interview with ex-denier Christian Lindtner
This blog recently conducted an interview with former denier Christian Lindtner, who had once been involved with the 2006 revisionist conference in Tehran. After continuing his research into the Holocaust, Lindtner came to disavow his earlier position

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2011/10/interview-with-ex-denier-christian.html

The title of this blog I refer to includes these words "What Part Of The Word Genocide Do You Not Understand?"

Dated: OCTOBER 19, 2011

I think your outrage is a little out of date.

[struggle4progress]

34. Lindtner is a rightwing antisemite whose effort to dejudaicize Jesus falls strictly along the lines

of historical Northern European antisemitism: you can, for example, already find the theory "Jesus was an Aryan" in the works of HS Chamberlain. It is a game the Nazis played extensively, and the Neo-Nazis continue to play it

I'm pleased, of course, if Lindtner decided last year that holocaust-denial wasn't worth the trouble, but it doesn't do much to rehabilitate his long history of bogus scholarship: he's been moving in rightwing antisemitic circles for years, pushing views that have no real credibility and sport a definite Nazi pedigree

[DavidL]

37. So give us some most recent quotes......(which you didn't bother to fully read)

" pushing views that have no real credibility and sport a definite Nazi pedigree".

Might I remind you that most Nazi's were Christians? (Certainly NOT Jews, whose religion predates Christianity!)

[struggle4progress]

40. Look at the links I've already posted: he ran an antisemitic conference last year, in which he

spoke about "Jewish Propaganda in Ancient Greece"

[DavidL]

41. I don't read garbage. You have something to tell me about

how Christianity is superior to all those other mythologies?

Why are you so obsessed with this man? I pointed to the article as one easily accessible on the internet with dozens of scholarly footnotes, you have better material? (PLEASE don't point to the Bible, it has no footnotes!)

[struggle4progress]

42. Nazis were strongly encouraged to break any ties with the church, as indicated here:

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/koehler.htm

However, for those unready to abandon Christianity, the Nazis began to provide "dejudaicized bibles"

Jewish references erased in newly found Nazi Bible
Last updated at 14:47 07 August 2006
An institute in Germany has unearthed a Nazi bible ordered by Adolf Hitler to replace the old and new testaments expunged of all references to Jews ...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-399470/Jewish-references-erased-newly-Nazi-Bible.html

Hitler rewrote the Bible and added two commandments
10.08.2006
An institute, founded on Hitler’s command, rewrote Bible texts, eliminating all mentions of the special role of the Jewish people. According to Hitler’s version, Christ was an advocate of Aryan ideas ...
english.pravda.ru/world/europe/10-08-2006/83892-hitler-0/

Susannah Heschel has provided scholarly work on the subject:

A conversation with Susannah Heschel
Author of 'The Aryan Jesus,' a chilling study of the religious movement in Nazi Germany that tried to remove any elements of Judaism from the figure of Jesus
By David B. Green | Mar.12, 2009 | 6:37 PM
... Heschel gained access to the archives of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life, which spearheaded this virulently anti-Semitic scholarly endeavor. Though concerned with different periods in modern history, both books grapple with Germany's profound, theologically based anti-Semitism. The members of the institute, which was shut down by local church officials in 1945, sought to create a synthesis of Christianity and National Socialism by removing the Hebrew Bible from the Christian canon and claiming that Jesus was not a Jew but an Aryan ...
http://www.haaretz.com/news/a-conversation-with-susannah-heschel-1.271999

[DavidL]

44. Nazi's got a "get out of Christianity Free" card, and

Christians got an easy excuse for their actions.

So how does this relate to the history of the con-game we call Christianity, and the parallels we all can see with other ancient mythologies?

Seems like you want to excuse millions of murdering German Christians who were Nazi's, but excusing people who question the credentials of the basic tenets of Christianity, (virgin birth.. yadda yadda yedda)....well, now you base your defense all upon a questionable anti-semite intellectual you fail to understand, and upon the free passes issued to Christians in Hitler's Germany to be anti-semites???????

Do you know how absurd your "Coincidence or Conspiracy" arguments look to an outsider?

[trotsky]

45. What kind of revisionist history are you attempting to write?

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/paul_23_4.html

Among his Nazi cronies Hitler criticized the established churches harshly and often. Some of these alleged statements must be treated with skepticism, but clearly he viewed the traditional Christian faiths as weak and contaminated by Judaism. Still, there is no warrant for the claim that he became anti-Christian or antireligious after coming to power. No reliably attributed quote reveals Hitler to be an atheist or in any way sympathetic to atheism. On the contrary, he often condemned atheism, as he did Christians who collaborated with such atheistic forces as Bolshevism. He consistently denied that the state could replace faith and instructed Speer to include churches in his beloved plans for a rebuilt Berlin. The Nazi-era constitution explicitly evoked God. Calculating that his victories over Europe and Bolshevism would make him so popular that people would be willing to abandon their traditional faiths, Hitler entertained plans to replace Protestantism and Catholicism with a reformed Christian church that would include all Aryans while removing foreign (Rome-based) influence. German Protestants had already rejected a more modest effort along these lines, as will be seen below. How Germans as a whole would have received this reform after a Nazi victory is open to question. In any case, Hitler saw himself as Christianity’s ultimate reformer, not its dedicated enemy.

[struggle4progress]

46. .

[trotsky]

48. I see you are conceding the point.

In your usual pathetically sad way.

[struggle4progress]

24. Let's chat about the "Acharya" source Lindtner some more, with reference to my #19, 20, 21, 22, & 23

Lindtner turns out to be a rightwing Danish antisemite, who is diligently pushing an old Nazi program -- namely, the polemical dejudaicizing of Western culture and the attempt to attribute all progress to the "Aryans." This program originated in the nineteenth century, and one particular branch of it emphasizes the "non-Jewishness" of Jesus in favor of purported Persian or Indian roots of all Christian tradition -- which is exactly Lindtner's propaganda game

[trotsky]

27. Congratulations. You've done a fine job ad hom'ing Lindtner.

Do you have anything to say about the facts?

[struggle4progress]

29. It is a fact that Lindtner is a rightwing antisemite whose effort to dejudaicize Jesus

lies strictly along an old line of historical Northern European antisemitism: you can, for example, already find the theory "Jesus was an Aryan" in the works of HS Chamberlain. So Lindtner's views have an intellectual pedigree that has no credibility nowadays

[trotsky]

30. That's great. We agree his views are despicable.

This thread isn't about him, however.

[struggle4progress]

31. Feel free to complain upthread to DavidL who at #5 supplied the bullshit "Acharya" pdf,

the scholarship of which I have been criticizing

[DavidL]

38. Feel free to update your knowledge on just ONE of

dozens of links provided in the text I linked to.

Care to try and defame any of dozens of other links in the article? (Last count over 3 dozen authors)

[struggle4progress]

43. You gave us a pdf by "Acharya" who has a BA and no other qualifications and who uncritically cites

rightwing antisemites: I don't think I'll waste any more time on her wacko crap today, thanks anyway

[trotsky]

39. Yes, as I said, you've succesfully google-bombed the hell out of the reputation of that guy.

But you have yet to address a single fact.

[struggle4progress]

50. Citing Gerald Massey is a dead giveaway of the quality of "Acharya's" research

I especially enjoyed Acharya's footnote #92, quoting Massey:

"Horus in Egypt had been a fish from time immemorial, and when the equinox entered the sign of Pisces, Horus, was portrayed as Ichthys with the fish sign over his head."

http://www.horusegyptology.co.uk/


... Horus, in the sekhemty double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt ...
http://www.egyptological.com/2011/09/ancient-egyptian-religion-part-2-concepts-of-creation-god-and-eternity-5281

... Horus is recorded in Egyptian hieroglyphs as ḥr.w; the pronunciation has been reconstructed as *Ḥāru, meaning "falcon". Additional meanings are thought to have been "the distant one" or "one who is above, over".[4] By Coptic times, the name became Hōr. It was adopted into Greek as Ὧρος Hōros. The original name also survives in later Egyptian names such as Har-si-ese literally "Horus, son of Isis". Horus was also known as Nekheny, meaning "falcon". Some have proposed that Nekheny may have been another falcon-god, worshipped at Nekhen (city of the hawk), with which Horus was identified from early on. Horus may be shown as a falcon on the Narmer Palette dating from the time of unification of Upper and Lower Egypt ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horus

[rug]

8. Neither. Here's one response (sorry, no cartoons).

http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/HORUS.htm

[edhopper]

13. Wow

is that article full of the most "Jesus is unique" bullshit I've seen in a while.

[rug]

17. Kind of like saying Horus = Jesus.

[edhopper]

25. Pointing out how Jesus, and the Bible in general

fits into many myths, especially those from the region.
Seems quite different to me than declaring that the story of Jesus is absolutely true and unique.
But you wish to hold on to the divinity and uniqueness of Jesus, so I understand how it would be hard to accept
that the NT is just another myth with precedent and major similarities to many others from that area and time period.

[rug]

26. There's a lot of overlap im many of them.

That's still a far cry from a fumbling attempt to equate them.

Don't worry, it will take more than a questionably inaccurate cartoon to give me pause.

Maybe the two of you can get together and link to the anthropological consensus that it's a myth made from whole cloth.

[edhopper]

28. You mean

like Noah, Abraham, Moses etc....

[rug]

32. I expect you'd find a lot of similarities in the OT.

[edhopper]

35. Bu5t the NT

is real and special and unique.

[rug]

36. So is your typing.

[edhopper]

47. True that.

You know re-reading, I think my last few post might have crossed over from snarky to insulting.
Not my intention, sorry.

[rug]

49. NP but thank you.

My typing is eccentric too.

[struggle4progress]

9. Let's see any of those claims about the myth of Horus confirmed by a genuine Egyptologist

Last edited Sat Oct 20, 2012, 11:14 PM - Edit history (1)

December BTW was a Roman month, not an Egyptian month, and the Roman calendar was infamous before the reform of Julius Caesar for having become rather wacky

In addition, the fixing of 25 December as the Christ-mass occurs relatively late:

... About A.D. 200, Clement of Alexandria (Stromata I.21) says that certain Egyptian theologians "over curiously" assign, not the year alone, but the day of Christ's birth, placing it on 25 Pachon (20 May) in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus. [Ideler (Chron., II, 397, n.) thought they did this believing that the ninth month, in which Christ was born, was the ninth of their own calendar.] Others reached the date of 24 or 25 Pharmuthi (19 or 20 April). With Clement's evidence may be mentioned the "De paschæ computus", written in 243 and falsely ascribed to Cyprian (P.L., IV, 963 sqq.), which places Christ's birth on 28 March, because on that day the material sun was created. But Lupi has shown (Zaccaria, Dissertazioni ecc. del p. A.M. Lupi, Faenza, 1785, p. 219) that there is no month in the year to which respectable authorities have not assigned Christ's birth. Clement, however, also tells us that the Basilidians celebrated the Epiphany, and with it, probably, the Nativity, on 15 or 11 Tybi (10 or 6 January) ... The December feast .. reached Egypt between 427 and 433 ...

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03724b.htm

So the modern date for the Christ-mass did not flow from Egypt but rather into Egypt from the West, thousands of years after the original cult of Horus had been forgotten

[cleanhippie]

11. Let's see any of those claims about the myth of Moses confirmed by a genuine Egyptologist

[struggle4progress]

12. You're confusing two completely different things: I have no problem whatsoever

with people who want to take the PoV that stories in the Bible are myth; I do, however, have real problems with people who simply make up bullshit to support their claims that stories in the Bible are myth, just as I have real problems with people who simply make up bullshit to support their claims that stories in the Bible are historical fact

If you want to dispute the historical accuracy of various Biblical stories, that won't bother me at all -- but if you decide to spread bullshit that Horus was traditionally considered to have been born on December 25th, and that the date of Christmas was chosen based on such a date for Horus' birthday, backed by thousands of years of tradition, then you've just wandered into crazy territory: the Romans didn't conquer Egypt until 30BC, and December is a Roman month

The ancient Egyptian calendar was 12*30 + 5 days in length, so drifted about 25 days per century. The calendar used by the Macedonians seems to have been a lunar-solar calendar of 354 days with intercalary months as corrections. The Roman calendar, before the Julian reform, which added the familiar leap day every fourth year, involved 355 day years with intercalary years about 377 days long, but it was about 80 days out of sync with the traditional seasons when Caesar was in Egypt. The probable reason for the choice, of December 25 as the final official date of Christmas, was that it was considered the date of the solstice after the Julian reform

[cleanhippie]

14. Wait, so if spreading info about Horus is "wandering into crazy territory", the same is true

about info on jesus, right?


Cue the rationalizations in 3,2,1...

[struggle4progress]

15. I expect quite a number of visitors to this forum would be interested in careful historical

and archaeological research, into (say) syncretism in various religions: that could be very informative, regardless of one's particular cultural background or one's particular philosophical commitments or one's particular religious views