Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth

The savior and crucifixion archetypes were very common in the Pagan world, even in parts of the world as remote from each other as South America and Northern Europe. Its very strong in the human collective unconscious. Part of the reason why I think Christianity spread and stuck around is because people liked the idea of the living sacrifice being more in the form of a human-commoner, as opposed to a super-being like Osiris or Odin. The main problem, though, is they still kept Jesus on the pedestal of a divine god that can't be emulated. By putting him on the unobtainable status of exclusive godhead manifested in the flesh, people just give lip service to his ideals and don't give a real effort in trying to live their life in the manner he did. Why even bother trying to be like a being of absolute perfection? If people focused more on the human qualities, more could be achieved on a personal and collective level.

 

This is false information

And your illinformed...

 

No, MellowViper isn't ill informed at all.... for a deeper and more scholarly look into the whole idea, my great grandfather John M. Robertson wrote extensively on this.... The two books below may be of interest. They continue to be valued by scholars to this day, and are still referred to by serious students of comparative hierology....


"You take the blue pill - the story ends...you take the red pill - and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. - Morpheus in The Matrix....

Talk about your red pills.... J.M. Robertson herein challenges not only the historical authenticity of the canonical accounts of the founding of Christianity, but also Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism. He answers the question implicit in Kersey Graves' 1875 screed, The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors. Why so many similar stories of savior figures in world religion?

At the dark heart of this mystery, according to Robertson, is a prehistoric drama involving human sacrifice (particularly, of children), cannibalism, and regicide. The purpose: to implore the gods, or to expiate collective sin. As time passed, the rituals were softened, and turned into symbolic equivalents (such as the scapegoat and the eucharist), while retaining the tragic end of the narrative. A culture hero, born under portents, dies, often under torture, in order to save all humanity. These and other tropes ended up embedded in our tales of the founders of major religions, from Buddha to Jesus.

Robertson pulls in historic, ethnographic and folklore data from hundreds of carefully cited sources. He covers examples from antiquity such as Mithraism, Manichaeism, and Apollonius of Tyana. In the final section he universalizes his study and focuses on Native America, particularly the Aztec. The conclusions of this book remain highly controversial, but the sheer mass of evidence accumulated demands consideration. This will be a thorny book for believers, but a revelation for free-thinkers."

J.B. Hare, Feb. 10, 2008.​

Click on the titles to read them on line.... ​

Christianity and mythology​

Pagan Christs​

Aemilius​

 

This seems a very rough summary but actually not so false and ill informed as you think.

 

With all respect to your great great grandfather, his highly speculative, impressionistic treatise is a bit dated. Historians have come along way since then, and no serious scholar considers it to be more than an historical curiosity. As for Graves' travesty, he cites no sources and misrepresents the historical record to a point that would earn him an F in a history class today. Most of his Sixteen Crucified Christs were not crucified. Nor did Graves forsee the possibility that pagan myths could be influenced by Christianity. Christian Nestorians active in India account for any parallels between the Krishna myth and Jesus. None of his Krishna sources predates the Nestorians. So thoroughly has the dying savior genre been discredited by J.Z Smith and Mark S. Smith that Tryggve Mettinger had to resurrect the genre by identifying a few holdouts who might qualify. Actually, the real pagan influence on Jesus came indirectly from Zoroastrianism (if we consider that Pagan) to Judaism during the Persian protectorate era. The Essenes, in particular, emphasized the powers of Light versus the powers of Darkness, and Essene influence on Jesus is not unlikely. For a Jesus myth theory based on historical Jewish roots, instead of pagan ones, see Wells, Did Jesus Exist?, which is also lacking.

 

Thanx Okiefreak, you have much more perseverance than I have.

I get about a third the way into these books, treatise and videos and think what in the world are they talking about? These pagan myths don't even vaguely resemble the Jesus I know and I can't even recognize enough of what they're talking about to try and refute what is being said and yet I'm suppose to believe Jesus is based on these myths?

I just give up and think I've got better things to do.

 

I whole heartily believe that Christmas and Easter are pagan holidays and that is only a google search away and as for Christians borrowing some ideas and creating Jesus..Well, I think you would first need to read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and about Jesus ministry and what he taught and then go from there..

 

What specifically in Easter makes it pagan?

 

To me, specifically is that the bible never mentions of a celebration of easter and does not tell us to celebrate it..so, that to me, makes it not of the bible..thus, not a part of the christian religion.

thus, mans tradition, not gods


pagan is such a wide word

 

Do you consider catholic priests pagan too?

 

The origin of the word Easter stems from our German language.
Ēostre aka Ostara was an old Germanic Goddess who in accordance with the moon cycles would descend into the underworld for three days. She would replenish the damned souls in the underworld and guide them to a more beneficial afterlife, among many other things.

Ostara was so firmly anchored in Germanic Heathen practice that the Christian teachers accepted the name and applied it to one of their own grandest celebrations.

 

It is never mentioned to have a celebration of Christ's triumph over death? What then is the weekly Christian Sabbath?

God did give us the Canon of Scripture, but through Mother Church, so luckily each believer does not have to go it alone like the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8.

BTW -- you brought up pagan. I know it is a broad category.

 

So in English and German a name was co-opted. What about everyone else in the world. Latin, Greek, other Germanic and Slavic based languages have other words. Most derive from Latin or Greek words for Passover or Resurrection.

 

went ahead and did some research on the topic of Easter..

This is from the Catholic Encyclopedia- (1913) Vol.V, p.227

"A great many pagan customs, celebrating the return of spring, gravitated to Easter. The egg is the emblem of the germinating life of early spring...the rabbit is a pagan symbol and has always been an emblem of fertility.

and the Encyclopedia Britannica comments: "There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament, or in the writings of the apostolic Fathers. The sanctity of special times was an idea absent from the minds of the first Christians."

 

Yes, but where are eggs and rabbits in the Mass? Nowhere. Those are folk customs the Church tolerates.

Okay, so the Apostles may not have celebrated a liturgical year like we do, but by the mid 100s there appears to be a widespread use of the Passover dates as a special commemoration of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. If we use solely the NT as a way to guide our Sunday worship services we have almost nothing to go on.

 

That to me is a problem, why should the Church tolerate something God has asked us not to do.

Actually the Bible does indicate a celebration of the memorial of Christ's sacrifice. Jesus told his disciples at his last passover meal to basically reenact the "last supper" often. And 1 Corinthians 11:20-26 seems to depict that celebration and how it was handled at the time.

As for a "Sabbath or Sunday worship", you are correct there is not much to go on as to what it would entail, even nothing to say what day it should be on but the scriptures do say we should not forsake the gathering of ourselves together but that we should continue gathering to encourage one another. (Hebrews 10:25)

 

Well because the Church had realized that the culture was too deeply ingrained in various the peoples to ever be eradicated. I probably should have added a reluctant tolerance in that they do not encourage it and turn a blind eye to it...

However, the theology of the memorial and what it does. As per the whole of the gospels and apostolic teaching through the Church his Last Supperis a true memorial of his Resurrection (because, to paraphrase St Paul, what good is it if he just died?).

Do the Scriptures no say that we should celebrate on the first day of the week...therefore a memorial of his Resurrection?

 

Yes, I agree that there are archetypes reflecting common perceptual patterns and psychological needs that we all share as humans. However, contemporary scholarship suggests that the similarities between savior deities and Jesus are not as close as the nineteenth century mythicists like Frazier and Graves made out. You mention "crucified" saviors being common. They were not. Crucifixion is a specific form of execution perfected by the Romans involving being tied or nailed to a cross in a position leading to slow asphyxiation. Graves' sixteen crucified saviors weren't crucified. Atheist historian Richard Carrier examines these examples and finds that none were crucified. The only crucified deity he can come up with is the Sumerian goddess Inanna (aka Ishtar), whom Graves confused with her husband. Even Innana doesn't work, since she was killed before being hung on a hook, although she was revitalized by attending deities.

Of the numerous examples cited by other writers, Horus did not die at all, and his father, Osiris, was reassembled and revived by Isis after being chopped into pieces and scattered. But he did not return to earth and became lord of the dead. Atis, the Phrygian god of vegetation, was not crucified, and his "sacrifice" was self-castration, done out of grief and frustration over not being able to have Cybele--not for our benefit. When he died (under a tree, not on it), Cybele persuaded Zeus to allow him to experience a twilight existence: his hair continued to grow and he could move a finger. There is no record of Mithras dying and being resurrected. He was a warrior god of a military cult popular among the Roman legions. None of those gods was a savior in the sense of providing personal immortality to believers--at least not before the third century, when they may have begun to copy Christian beliefs. So are these pretty much the same as Jesus? Not as I see it.

 

Jesus seems to have objected to the traditions of men if they went against what God wanted. Shouldn't we also object to pagan traditions that go against what God wants, no matter how ingrained?

I didn't really understand your point here, sorry.

Yes, Jesus was resurrected on the day of the week we now call Sunday but I don't recall anything said about celebrating on the first day of the week. Perhaps you could refresh my memory on what Scripture you are talking about.