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Goodbye Jesus

Justin Martyr Apologetic Quote Backfires; Admits Jesus Wasn't Original.


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Justin Martyr was a second-century christian apologist who tried to convince the pagans of his day of the truth of christianity, yet he ends up proving that belief in jesus could just as easily be belief an any other god of the day. Here is what he said:

 

"And when we say also that the word, who is the first birth of god, was produced without sexual union, and that he, jesus christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to jupiter: Mercury, Aesculapius, Bacchus, Hercules; and the sons of Leda and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon. And what kind of deeds are recorded of each of these reputed sons of Jupiter, it is needless to tell to those who already know...If we even affirm that he (jesus) was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Perseus. And in that we say that he (jesus) made whole the lame, the paralytic, and those born blind, we seem to say what is very similar to the deeds said to have been done by Aesculapius."

 

There were also savior-gods manifested in the flesh like Krishna, Osiris, Dionysus, and Tammuz, who were born of virgins and known to the gospel writers centuries before. These same gods, just like the god/jesus of the bible also worked miracles. Most of them were crucified, and they also rose from the dead. 

 

This doesn't give christianity any real confidence that jesus was born of a virgin, when similar stories were told about others before and even during jesus' time. If jesus was fathered by god and was born a virgin, why do they believe this claim but reject all the others that claim the exact same things? Why do christians believe their story, but reject the exact same stories of all the other's? 

 

Think about it christians. 

 

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There were also savior-gods manifested in the flesh like Krishna, Osiris, Dionysus, and Tammuz, who were born of virgins and known to the gospel writers centuries before. These same gods, just like the god/jesus of the bible also worked miracles. Most of them were crucified, and they also rose from the dead.

 

You lost me there. I see those claims allover the internet (they probably gained traction with the Zeitgeist movie some 9-10 years ago) but I have yet to see them verified. The alleged similarities are often exaggerated, or none-existant.

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There were also savior-gods manifested in the flesh like Krishna, Osiris, Dionysus, and Tammuz, who were born of virgins and known to the gospel writers centuries before. These same gods, just like the god/jesus of the bible also worked miracles. Most of them were crucified, and they also rose from the dead.

 

You lost me there. I see those claims allover the internet (they probably gained traction with the Zeitgeist movie some 9-10 years ago) but I have yet to see them verified. The alleged similarities are often exaggerated, or none-existant.

 

The christian claims of jesus are also not verified either. The claims made about jesus are also exaggerated and non-existant. The point, is that all these other savior-gods have no evidence to back them up, and neither does the savior-god jesus. 

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There were also savior-gods manifested in the flesh like Krishna, Osiris, Dionysus, and Tammuz, who were born of virgins and known to the gospel writers centuries before. These same gods, just like the god/jesus of the bible also worked miracles. Most of them were crucified, and they also rose from the dead.

 

You lost me there. I see those claims allover the internet (they probably gained traction with the Zeitgeist movie some 9-10 years ago) but I have yet to see them verified. The alleged similarities are often exaggerated, or none-existant.

 

The christian claims of jesus are also not verified either. The claims made about jesus are also exaggerated and non-existant. The point, is that all these other savior-gods have no evidence to back them up, and neither does the savior-god jesus. 

 

 

And my point is this: I'm getting tired of seeing tired and unbased claims such as "Tammuz and Horus predates Jeebus and they're like totally similar", because it's quite simply bullshit. I am all for criticizing Christianity, but in a well-articulated way, not by resorting to - and perpetuating - lies and half-truths.

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Christian apologetics: total fail since 150 CE. 

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...

This doesn't give christianity any real confidence that jesus was born of a virgin, when similar stories were told about others before and even during jesus' time. If jesus was fathered by god and was born a virgin, why do they believe this claim but reject all the others that claim the exact same things? Why do christians believe their story, but reject the exact same stories of all the other's? 

...

 

 

They (Christians) believe it because of childhood indoctrination by trusted adults and peer pressure (past and current), among other reasons.

 

Few Christians take the time to actually study other religions (they are instructed to avoid such inquiries).  It's not surprising at all that they accept the mythology they were taught and reject the mythology they know nothing about.

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I was just about to say that "I guess people back then were not persuaded by originality," but on reflection it occurred to me that Christians to this day use this line of reasoning when attempting to convert people of non-Abrahamic faiths. What someone like Tim Kellar might call "gospel contextualization" involves Christians wooing others to their religion by emphasizing the similarities of Jesus to the religion of the prospective proselyte. This is a favorite strategy when proselytizing so-called "unreached peoples" whose cultures aren't heavily influenced by Christianity. Only when Christians reach a dominating level of influence in a culture (e.g. the United States) do they begin emphasizing the differences between Christianity and other religions.

 

Oh, one minor pet peeve I should probably correct here:

 

There were also savior-gods manifested in the flesh like Krishna, Osiris, Dionysus, and Tammuz, who were born of virgins and known to the gospel writers centuries before. These same gods, just like the god/jesus of the bible also worked miracles. Most of them were crucified, and they also rose from the dead. 

 

This is actually not correct. Krishna is in fact the eighth son born to his mother in the mythological account of his birth. So his mother obviously wasn't a virgin. And more to the point, he was concieved by his mother having sex with his father, not by being divinely impregnated. Growing up Hindu I was quite familiar with this story, so during my time as a Christian when atheists trotted out this fact, I was very happy to cast doubt on their entire argument by picking out their factually incorrect claim. I have even heard people say that Krishna died by crucifixion and was resurrected (I realize you didn't explicitly make that claim above), and none of this is true either. Probably best that we stop comparing Krishna to Jesus.

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I have even heard people say that Krishna died by crucifixion and was resurrected (I realize you didn't explicitly make that claim above), and none of this is true either. 

 

They say the same things (born of a Virgin, crucified and resurrected) about Tammuz, Horus, Dionysus, Mithra and several other gods. It's a bullshit idea which gained popularity some years ago. 

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I have even heard people say that Krishna died by crucifixion and was resurrected (I realize you didn't explicitly make that claim above), and none of this is true either. 

 

They say the same things (born of a Virgin, crucified and resurrected) about Tammuz, Horus, Dionysus, Mithra and several other gods. It's a bullshit idea which gained popularity some years ago. 

 

Correct. The downside being that if we use this argument against an opponent that knows their stuff, we get our asses handed to us.

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I am not convinced proving or disproving Xianity is true rest on any one single issue. I don't see single issues like this one being a game changer either way. Evidence that challenged the authenticity of the Bible was what convinced me as well as the science & physics arguments.

 

I think for most people it's the combination quality & quantity of a proponderance of evidence that conclusively proves Xian beliefs,teaching, & traditions are simply not true that ultimately create doubt first & then eventually the complete rejection of Xiamity.

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You need not go any further than the fact that the New Testicle was written DECADES after Jesus and any of his followers lived.

 

Jesus would not have lived into his seventies if he had not been killed. His apostles, if not most of his other disciples, were at least his age or older;

in Jesus' time, it took X number of years of study to become a rabbi, and then you were allowed to begin your public teaching work. Most of Jesus' first 12

followers were students of "John The Baptizer", who had to be older than Jesus in order to have been teaching and baptizing already.

 

Even if we say that Peter was 35, five years older than Jesus, he would have to have lived until he was at least 65 or 70 just to have been ABLE to have seen a copy

of a story about Jesus that he could verify or dispute. Couple that with the fact that all these NT stories were written in various, far-apart places by anonymous authors,

and there's no possible way that the people whose names are attached to these stories could reasonably have been alive to read them, let alone to write them, let alone for

all of them to have been able to corroborate and approve one another's versions of things.

 

It makes no difference what else people put forth as evidence from the actual text of the bible - the bible is fiction, so attributing a miracle to a character in the bible is no different

than saying a '58 Plymouth Fury killed people because it's in a book. A book with people who have names and said and did things. We know the book was not written by anyone in the story.

Stephen King wrote it and set it in a different time and place than when and where he actually lived. Not a bit of it is expected to be literally true even if any of it is reasonable or useful.

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After further investigation I tend to agree with rjn, Part of the problem seems to be who is being read. Christian "scholars" tend to downplay any similarities between the Jesus story and other ancient god/man myths. I would tend to put more confidence in secular historians theories.

 

I came away with the view that any similarities between the Jesus story and other ancient God/men myths is incidental at best. Mythical Gods mating with human females exists in a number of these myths, but the pregnancy was the result of sexual intercourse not a virgin birth.

 

A number of these God/men died and came back to life in one way or another but none of them, as far as I have found, were resurrected. There is at least one case of a God turning water into wine, but this God was the God of wine.

 

Some of these God/men had followers or disciples but not 12 of them, at least that I have found.

 

At best bits and pieces of other myths could have been the inspiration for some of the story line found in the Gospel of Christ but like rjn noted I did not find any matching events. I didn't find anything that would either prove or disprove that the story line of these other ancient myths did or did not contribute to the Jesus story. Some of these other myths had some fuzzy similarities with the Jesus story.

 

But like I posted in another comment, I don't see this as a game changer either way. It is at best a peripheral piece of circumstantial information that may or may not have contributed to the Jesus story. I would hesitate to even call it evidence maybe coincidence would be more accurate.

 

If I was debating a Christian I wouldn't bring this piece of information into the conversation because I think it's relevance is at best murky and potentially more detrimental than helpful.

 

There is more than enough real historical authenticated evidence to validate the Jesus story as either a myth or a total exaggeration and a fictional rewrite of some individual's life.

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Brought back to life and resurrected seems to be a distinction without a difference unless you add the caveat of dying again.

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[...]

 

At best bits and pieces of other myths could have been the inspiration for some of the story line found in the Gospel of Christ [...]

 

 

There are indeed similarities to be found, especially between the Old Testament and other myths from the same area. As far as the Gospels go, though, it's far from the 1:1 correlation some people make it up to be. Horus did not have 12 disciples, was not Baptized by some Anup the Baptist (a completely made up character AFAIK) and Isis sure as hell wasn't a "Virgin", yet all these claims keep resurfacing despite being complete bullshit. No wonder fundies believe in atheist conspiraces that are out to discredit them... 

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