Hi TK,
I visited a church this morning where the pastor addressed this very issue. He was answering questions from the congregation and he spent the most time addressing this subject. Here are links to the message and notes.
http://themeetinghouse.ca/podcast/audio ... sermon.mp3
http://themeetinghouse.ca/podcast/hando ... -notes.pdf
BTW…during his answer he mentioned a 2 part series they did responding to “The Pagan Christ” written by Tom Harpur (the same book that mattrose mentioned). Here’s a link to that as well. Go to the series titled “God at the Bookstore: The Pagan Christ”
http://themeetinghouse.ca/themeetinghou ... ls=1000094
If you’re interested, here’s a link to an interview Tom Harpur did on a Christian radio show about his book.
http://www.drewmarshall.ca/audio/050226tomharpur.m3u
Similarities between Jesus and Osiris, Dionysus, Horus, etc
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_anothersteve
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Avatar...My daughter and I standing on a glass floor. well over 1000 feet above ground at the CN Tower in Toronto...the tiny green dots beside my left foot are trees.
Your welcome Rae. I'm glad it helped.Rae wrote:Thank you Robin for posting that! It was a very insightful and helpful article!
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God Bless
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_anothersteve
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I'm reading Lee Strobel's new book "The Case for the Real Jesus". He has a section which deals with this issue directly.
Scholars such as Michael Licona, Edwin Yamauchi, Ronald Nash and even liberal scholar Thomas Boslooper believe that there is no merit to the mystery religion connection . According to Strobel's book, the vast majority of serious scholars who have looked into the issue don't see a connection either.
Strobel's book contends that the myths are not found in the mystery religions until well after Christ's birth (sometimes hundreds of years later). The book also contends that the connections that predate Christianity are vague at best. Like Mithras being born fully grown out of Rock is suppose to parallel the virgin birth...Huh?
The book points out that the “mystery religion parallel” was first hypothesized by scholars in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The theory was struck down by scholars years later and has resurfaced as pseudo scholarship in recent days.
The scholars in Strobel's book bemoan the fact that so much false information is out there. To them it's like trying to stop the Davinci Code train of misinformation.
Scholars such as Michael Licona, Edwin Yamauchi, Ronald Nash and even liberal scholar Thomas Boslooper believe that there is no merit to the mystery religion connection . According to Strobel's book, the vast majority of serious scholars who have looked into the issue don't see a connection either.
Strobel's book contends that the myths are not found in the mystery religions until well after Christ's birth (sometimes hundreds of years later). The book also contends that the connections that predate Christianity are vague at best. Like Mithras being born fully grown out of Rock is suppose to parallel the virgin birth...Huh?
The book points out that the “mystery religion parallel” was first hypothesized by scholars in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The theory was struck down by scholars years later and has resurfaced as pseudo scholarship in recent days.
The scholars in Strobel's book bemoan the fact that so much false information is out there. To them it's like trying to stop the Davinci Code train of misinformation.
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Avatar...My daughter and I standing on a glass floor. well over 1000 feet above ground at the CN Tower in Toronto...the tiny green dots beside my left foot are trees.
Steve, thanks for mentioning that. I heard Lee on "The Bible Answer Man" broadcast recently and they discussed this issue at length. It seems some of us were giving this argument too much validity, due to one of the links posted above. I think one of the guys Lee interviewed on Mithras is actually the leading expert on the lengend of Mirthras. I wonder if the skeptics who are advancing the copycat theory are aware of this.
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_anothersteve
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JC wrote
"Contemporary writers invariably use only secondary sources to verify such claims. The scholars whose judgment they accept rarely produced or quoted the primary sources. The literature of the old German Religiongeshictliche schule, which produced this conclusion and which has become the authority for contemporary scholars who wish to perpetuate the notion that the virgin birth in the New Testament has a non-Christian source, is characterized by brief word, phrase, and sentence quotations that have been lifted out of context or incorrectly translated and used to support preconceived theories. Sweeping generalizations based on questionable evidence have become dogmatic conclusions that cannot be substantiated on the basis of careful investigation"
This is from a man, whose own theory that the virgin birth never took place, would be well served by the mystery religion connection. He simply doesn’t see the connection either. Instead he sees "scholars" taking their own theories and trying to superimpose them into the ancient texts.
Hi JC. Yamauchi, the scholar who Strobel did his most extensive interview with, is an expert in Mithraism. He has also studied 22 different languages including the ancient ones required to understand the Mithratic material. This was one of the issues that Yamauchi brought up. He said that many of the "scholars" who propagate the "copy-cat" theory are simply not familiar with the original languages. In fact Boslooper, a liberal scholar who doesn’t believe the virgin birth took place, made this statement:I think one of the guys Lee interviewed on Mithras is actually the leading expert on the lengend of Mirthras.
"Contemporary writers invariably use only secondary sources to verify such claims. The scholars whose judgment they accept rarely produced or quoted the primary sources. The literature of the old German Religiongeshictliche schule, which produced this conclusion and which has become the authority for contemporary scholars who wish to perpetuate the notion that the virgin birth in the New Testament has a non-Christian source, is characterized by brief word, phrase, and sentence quotations that have been lifted out of context or incorrectly translated and used to support preconceived theories. Sweeping generalizations based on questionable evidence have become dogmatic conclusions that cannot be substantiated on the basis of careful investigation"
This is from a man, whose own theory that the virgin birth never took place, would be well served by the mystery religion connection. He simply doesn’t see the connection either. Instead he sees "scholars" taking their own theories and trying to superimpose them into the ancient texts.
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Avatar...My daughter and I standing on a glass floor. well over 1000 feet above ground at the CN Tower in Toronto...the tiny green dots beside my left foot are trees.
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_SoaringEagle
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Our brother Evangelion has tackled many of these same objections. See the following link which may be of some use.
http://www.thechristadelphians.org/foru ... entry98873
http://www.thechristadelphians.org/foru ... entry98873
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