Freethought Nation

The discussion of Horus has reminded me of this article:

Rebuttal to Dr. Chris Forbes concerning 'Zeitgeist, Part 1'

... and this post from page one of this thread.

_________________
2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

Thanks for posting the article FTL. That's a good example of what happens when these apologists, and some skeptical atheists, have to confront a book like CiE. It made a complete ass out of Forbes and showed the error in his asssertions across the entire board.

Abe, you might want to give the link a good going over because this type of rebuttle is also what Ehrman will be up against too if he goes for any of the same familiar wave of the hand dismissals that we're used to hearing. And also anyone who has taken Ehrman's doomsday Jesus theory as if it is their own personally conceived theory - hint, hint.

They (Ehrman and followers) carry the burden of proof of having to provide credible evidence for a fixed core to the Jesus story onion. But there is no core that I've ever seen. Anyone who has considered this carefully enough knows that too. The tid bits of doomsday material in the NT don't really provide a core to the onion of the Jesus story, and that was pretty much laid out clearly in the debate that you dropped a link to earlier, where you lost the debate: http://www.debate.org/debates/The-histo ... -leader/2/

The contrast and contradiction between Jesus' personality and messages between different gospels and verses (love your enemies / hate your family) only serves to outline the possibility of an amalgamation of different characters mixed together with a lot of mythology eventually resulting in the NT canon. The doomsday Jesus material is but one layer of a multi-layered onion with no core to be found, in other words. So how then is Erman's doomsday Jesus theory supposed to trump the MP?

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

Tat Tvam Asi, sorry, what do you mean by "MP"?

I mean this:

Doomsday cult leader Jesus who lived and died but never arose, Kind loving Jesus who lived and died but never arose, any Gnostic, Essene, or otherwise historical Jesus who lived and died but never really arose from the grave...

vs.



This is what was brought to the table in CiE along with the ongoing Alexandrian Hypothesis...

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

Thanks, Tat Tvam Asi, I appreciate it.

Also, do you have this yet Abe?

http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/z ... cebook.pdf

It's good for taking anything that appeared in the movie transcript and following up some of the scholarship and citations that went into the movies claims.

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

Thanks, that does help, and I will keep it on file for a project. As always, I wish the evidence would go directly to the ancient sources, but of course I can't have everything I want, and I think I am done dealing with this stuff for now. Cheers.

I'm curious, what project are you working on? Fill us in.

As for ancient primary sources what are you going to do with, for example, 5,000 year old Egyptian texts and hieroglyphs? Can you read it? What about, for example, ancient Greek or Sanskrit or any other ancient languages? What linguistic qualifications do you have? Unless you can read all that for yourself you are reliant upon others who can and that's precisely what Acharya S has been doing all along. That's one of her specialties.

_________________
2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

It is a personal project, more than anything. I am compiling the many Jesus-minimalist claims into like an encyclopedia, and Acharya S's arguments and evidences would be among them. The sort of literature that is popular among mythicists makes it especially difficult to research. They often don't cite the ancient evidence, but for their essential claims they cite previous modern authors, much like I have been complaining about, and it often goes back to some author in the 18th or 19th century who never cited any specific ancient source when he made the claim. It is a very big project, and I don't think I will ever come close to completing it. At this time in my life, I have other priorities, anyway. I may have to wait until retirement before I have sufficient time.

OK, yeah, translations of the ancient Egyptian texts would be great, and those translations can be compared to independent translations of high scholarly repute. I think that is a wonderful idea.

There are instances of that but, it's not an accurate assessment at all. It sounds like you haven't actually read these works for yourself but are instead repeating what you've heard online from others who also probably haven't performed a serious study of these works. Another thing Acharya S has done is investigate these works and tracked down the ancient primary sources that they were talking about and made sure that these sources were properly cited throughout her works.

I'm reminded of this thread about Kingdavid8's website and the FAQ post on Kersey Graves.


Again, that is precisely what Acharya S has done throughout her nearly 600 page book, Christ in Egypt. She has performed the extremely time consuming and painstaking work of sifting through those primary sources herself as well as the translations by the most highly respected scholars to date. Out of the nearly 2,400 footnote citations many of the most controversial areas include 3, 4, 5 and 6 source citations within one single footnote to compare them all to be as thorough as humanly possible. There are also over 1,600 sources in the bibliography alone. She deserves an award for the hard work put into that book. That book will end up being used in comparative religion and mythology courses. Btw, Man Made God is currently included in comparative religion courses in colleges.

_________________
2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

OK, thanks for that reassurance. You have read much more of Acharya S's literature than I have, and I was concerned that the labor I went through to hunt down the ancient evidence for Acharya S's claim that Horus was "Lamb of God" may be a process I would have to repeat for very many similar claims that she makes in her literature.

Labor? Just another day in the office with such ancient sources. This is what separates those who are serious about this type of work from those who are not. Maybe this type of work isn't for you? Keep in mind that you yourself did find the source. It was there. Keep GodAlmighty's post in mind too. Expecting perfect, pristine works isn't always reality with several thousand year old primary sources in languages that haven't been spoken in millennia. Remember, much was destroyed thanks to rampages by the three Abrahamic religions. It's a wonder we anything left at all. It's still happening to this very day:

Islamic Fundamentalists Destroy Ancient Statue of the Buddha

Pagan Destruction Chronology

Nevertheless, despite the lies across the internet, Acharya S does some of the best work around. Those who've seriously studied her work already know that:

_________________
2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

Thanks, Freethinkuluva. What I found in the up-to-date translation of the ancient source, after doing a search for the claim with the help of Tat Tvam Asi and S.T.F., was that Osiris (not Horus) was a "the black ram, son of a black sheep," which someone writing in the 19th century interpreted as, "Oh sheep, son of a sheep! Lamb son of a sheep," which someone in the early 20th century thought corresponded to "Lamb of God," and Acharya S cited that person for her claim, not the ancient evidence directly. That isn't the kind of scholarship I am used to, and maybe you are right. This is not my type of work, at least not for now. Maybe I'll have to get used to it.

Wait a minute. This is addressed to the King playing the part of the "the Osiris." The Horus King, after dying, takes on the role of the Osiris. The top of the link clearly states what the utterences are going into:

The deceased King was the Horus King while alive, and then moves on to the "Osiris" in death isn't he?

Now the basic idea here is that there existed in Egypt a mythological association between the Horus mythology and the Christ mythology. Was there also a lamb idea coming Judaism? Of course there was. In total there two lamb concepts in total. This book is about how hellenized Alexandrian Jews, living in Egypt, may have pieced together a mythology blending Judaism and Paganism. So you have to look at consider the myths of Egypt and Israel side by side in this light. And there existed such an idea in both mythologies. Our "Lamb of God" in Christianity has it's roots in Judaism and Paganism...

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

Thank you, Tat Tvam Asi. I think this is exactly the way a debate of these topics should be done--no citations to the end of a chain of prior modern authors, but it should be all to do with the ancient evidence. Using only the ancient evidence, we can effectively decide: "OK, is it more likely that the 'Lamb of God' title inspired by John's Christology of Jesus being killed around the time of Passover when lambs were sacrificed? Or was it more likely inspired by the 'black sheep' and 'white sheep' mythical dynamics of Horus and Osiris?" We can make fully informed decisions if we know the ancient evidences without needing to do a scavenger hunt. It is a lot easier to debate this stuff without the chain of modern authors.