All of the supernatural characters of Christianity

[_Milesius]

were stolen from the pagans. Doesn't that ring any alarm bells for you TBMs and Christians? Not even a little?

It would if your claim were true but it's not, so no ringing.

[_Milesius]

where was Jesus borrowed from?

Well, there are remarkable similarities to the stories of Horus, Mithra and Dionysus.

According to whom?

[_Milesius]

...

I do agree that some correlations are perhaps over exaggerated, but that isn't to say there is a good reason behind the similarities between, say, Hercules and Jesus.

...

In the case of Jesus, we have a figure that did not originally have a corporeal form. The earliest Christians had never heard the story of Jesus of Nazarath, born in Bethlehem. The Gospels that made it into the Bible were a few of hundreds of documents that discussed Jesus. They were widely variable in how he was portrayed.
...

You are still full of **** I see.

[_Milesius]

Occam's razor makes us chose the simplest explanation...

Ockham's razor is a heuristic device; it does not "make" us choose anything.

[_Buffalo]

were stolen from the pagans. Doesn't that ring any alarm bells for you TBMs and Christians? Not even a little?

It would if your claim were true but it's not, so no ringing.

It is absolutely true. The character El (not just the name) is Canaanite, and we find that character in the Bible. But the pagans invented him. Same goes for Yahweh.

[_Buffalo]

I hope you mind me jumping in on this topic!

I think sometimes our Mormon background may make us see religious history in a way that is different from that of other believers. In the Mormon faith the full truth about God was there from the beginning, with Adam himself, followed by cycles of apostasy and restoration. So if history shows that this clearly wasn’t the case, our conception of God is in trouble. But other Christians would probably think more in terms of God’s gradual revelation of himself to humanity. That our understanding of God and his works would evolve over time, both within Judaism and later Christianity, is to be expected. In fact, the orthodox theology would demand it since the infinite God could never be completely described or understood by any fixed system of beliefs. There is always more to God. And this isn’t some modern ad hoc defense of the faith, it is a very ancient approach.

Sure it took time for the monotheistic idea to be hammered home to the Jewish people. That is clear enough just from the Old Testament texts themselves. And a Christian who knows anything about their faith would know that some of the specific elements of the orthodox Christian creed were formally defined only over the span of centuries by the various ecumenical councils.

And the fact that the Jews use a Semitic term for God is no more surprising than the fact that we use an Indo-European term which I would assume has its roots in Indo-European mythology (whether it’s ‘God’ or ‘Deus’, etc.)

How would this process look different if it were just a fictional God evolving with the times?

I appreciate your thoughtful response, but I keep coming back to Occam's razor.

[Guest]

Judaism and Christianity were very distinctive religions for their times. I think it is a mistake to believe that they were simple copies or derivations of other ancient religious systems. The simplest way to see this is how they were actually viewed and treated by their contemporaries in the ancient world. Although fairly numerous, the Jews always stood out in Greco-Roman society because of their strict monotheism, religious practices (like the dietary laws), and charitable works among themselves. The Christians were almost always seen as significantly different and subversive by the Romans, who were generally tolerant when it came to religion. Even their pagan opponents would make comments like ‘see how they love each other’ on their widespread charity and solidarity. There was something distinctive about both Jews and Christians.

We should also be careful about seeing parallels in everything. Correlation does not prove causality. Just because Hellenistic mystery cults had heroic savior figures or the followers of Mithras had a sacred meal of bread and wine doesn’t mean that Christianity copied these elements from them. In fact, the existing evidence suggests that both Christ devotion and the Eucharistic meal arose among the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus and were not late developments of a Hellenized Gentile church. I think the academic study of early Christianity is due for an overhaul, especially with regard to the influence of Hellenistic culture, Gnosticism, and the orthodox tradition. Two good books along these lines are: ‘Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity’ by Larry W. Hurtado, and ‘Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels As Eyewitness Testimony’ by Richard Bauckham.

Judaism wasn't that distinctive from its Semitic neighbors, at least not until later in their history. Their version of God was just as bloody and anthropomorphic as anyone else's, and their monolatry was a late development, owing to the internal "cult of Yahweh" elements who steered the evolution of the Hebrew faith towards a belief in the superiority of Yahweh. In the Psalms we see Yahweh rebuking the other gods for their poor management of their respective nations. Successful religions evolve. There's nothing magic about that.

Imagine a Zeus cult, that recognizes Zeus as superior to all, but also respects all the other gods. But an internal group of Poseidon-worshipers work from within to merge Zeus and Poseidon (El and Yahweh) into the same god, and then later work to completely reject all the other Gods they formerly respected. That's Judaism in a nutshell.

The cult of Yahweh predates the gradual development of monolatry and monotheism in the Kingdom of Judah.[102] Theophoric names, names of local gods similar to Yahweh, and archaeological evidence are used along with the Biblical source texts to build theories regarding pre-Israel origins of Yahweh worship, the relationship of Yahweh with local gods, and the manner in which polytheistic worship of Yahweh worship evolved into Jewish monotheism.[103] For example, one source presents Yahweh as the name of a god in ancient Semitic religion, in origin a storm god both related to and in direct competition with Hadad (Baal).[104]

Early worship of Yahweh likely originated in southern Canaan during the Late Bronze Age.[105] Yahu (yhw) is recorded as a placename associated with Asiatic (i.e. Levantine) nomads in the 14th to 13th centuries BC. One text of the era of Amenophis III mentions "Yahu in the land of the Shoshu-Bedouins". A later mention from the era of Ramesses II associates Yahu with Mount Seir. From this, it is generally supposed that this Yahu refers to a place in the area of Moab and Edom.[106] Whether the god was in origin named after this place, or vice verse, is undecided. R. Giveon (1964) suggests that this Egyptian reference to yhw might be short for a *beth-yahweh, i.e. an early Canaanite cult center of Yahweh. A cult of Yahweh is not directly recorded in the northern Levant or Syria prior to the establishment of the kingdoms of ancient Israel and Judah. There have been suggestions of an early cult of Yahweh or Yahu at Ebla, but this has been established as a misconception based on faulty reading of cuneiform personal names.[107]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh

[_The Nehor]

Authentic historical evidence. Not 19th century "revelations"

Then you need to do a lot of reading.

Your ignorance is profound. Most of the Matthew proof texts have nothing to do with the messiah. The suffering servant, for instance, is Israel, not the Messiah. If you're bothered by reading, listen and learn from scholar:

http://mormonstories.org/?p=1476

No, some don't. Most did have Messianic significance in Judaism. Whether the original writers thought they did is a task for mind-readers and bad historians.

Resurrection is a common theme because it's part wish fulfillment, part hero archetype.

And real.

No. What I really, really wanted was for Mormonism to be true and for God to be real. The first time I seriously considered that there might not be a god, (several years ago) I was horrified. I couldn't deal with it. I felt like a chasm had opened up, that the whole world was empty and meaningless. I shelved my doubts for a year because I literally could not deal with that feeling. But my doubts didn't go away. I wish there were a God. I wish Mormonism were true. Sincerely.

Then you should have sought God again.

Thankfully, as I learned to do away with magical thinking, my peace of mind returned, and has never been better. But I still wish that Mormonism were true.

It is but I don't think you believe me.

As long as I continue to contribute my time, talents and money to the church, I will continue to call myself Mormon.

And I can't stop you. Carry on then.

[_Buffalo]

While I have never agreed with Jung's metaphysical aspects of a collective unconscious, it is obvious that people adopt some symbols easier than others. These concepts and symbols that people naturally latch onto will, of course, find their way into religions that have a large number of members.

I really like Campbell's take on the subject of symbols and archetypes. They pop up over and over, sometimes without even a direct cultural connection, because they resonate with the human psyche.

[_Buffalo]

When they made up the first draft. Religion 1.0, I guess.

You know, you write the first draft of a piece of fiction, then the editors (critics) come along, blow holes in your story, so you do rewrites until it becomes sensible.

And who knows? Maybe one day, religion will make sense. It would be a much better story if they hadn't tried to pass it off as fact in the first place.

If you look at sort of the pre-history of religion, you find some really interesting stuff. Before El and Yahweh and all those other developed gods, you have things like bear cults. A lot of groups regarded animals as a different kind of people.

And so it was troubling but necessary to eat them. So they had to come up with some myths to placate their own consciences, about freeing the animal to move on to a higher plane, etc. The killing became ritualized to serve the myth about easing the animal's passage to the higher plane. You can see how early, simple myths could evolve into more complex ones, including primitive Judaism with its animal sacrifice.