Take it personally
The Egyptian God from whom Christianity is supposedly coppied
I just watched a movie called Zeitgeist. If you endure the weird and boring first 8 minutes or so, the next 30 minutes of the movie are one of the most intelligent attacks on Christianity I've seen in a while. I'm wondering if any of you have done any research in the areas of the claims of this movie. The intent of the movie is to show how Christianity is simply a copy of many other God myths. I have also seen reference to these same arguments in the movie Religulous staring I believe Bill Mahr.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Roger Sharp on
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Mary Jo Sharp will be offering a 30 minute CD refutation of the internet movie, ZEITGEIST Tuesday, January 26th at the BGCO State Evangelism Conference. Stop by and get your copy :) Or, you can purchase from the website http://www.confidentchristianity.com
Roger Sharp
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Permalink Reply by Jimmy White on -
I just realized that the 2 subjects I brought up are the exact 2 subjects that Mary Jo address in her first 2 videos. I had no idea of this when I suggested the topics. I just visited her web site and saw the videos for sale and what they were about, and I could hardly believe it. Very interesting. I do wish others would start to reply and suggest topics. I wonder why no one is commenting?
Roger Sharp said:Mary Jo Sharp will be offering a 30 minute CD refutation of the internet movie, ZEITGEIST Tuesday, January 26th at the BGCO State Evangelism Conference. Stop by and get your copy :) Or, you can purchase from the website http://www.confidentchristianity.com
Roger Sharp
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Permalink Reply by Mary Jo Sharp on -
I wrote a master's thesis on this subject. What specifically would you like to know? Plus, I have an article coming out in the Areopagus Journal on the pagan gods, Mithras, Horus, and Osiris.
Very quickly: The argument from parallels between the pagan god stories and the story of Christ bear as much weight as saying an elephant is a table because it has four legs (hat tip to John H. Oswalt who wrote, "The Bible Among the Myths). When the pagan beliefs and the Christian beliefs are set into their proper philosophical understanding of the world and man's relation to God and the earth, these stories come out much differently. For example, the term "resurrection" has different meanings in the story of Osiris versus the story of Christ. Osiris is "resurrected" to a spirit life in the underworld as god of the dead. He never returns to this life. Jesus Christ has a physical resurrection in which he returns to a physical life. He is the example of the physical resurrection. The different meanings also result in different practical outworking of their beliefs in daily life.
One huge difference between Christianity and ancient Egyptian beliefs is the judgment. Egyptians do not know until their postmortem judgment whether they have lived a good enough life. Therefore, since they are unsure of their eternal destination, they live life in the 'now.' This is evidenced in their writings and songs, such as "Harper's Songs" which encourages an eat, drink, and be merry in this life due to the insecurity of an eternity (John H. Taylor, "Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt" page 45). Also a major difference is the possibility of annihilation of the wicked. The Egyptians have a belief that the wicked are completed annihilated versus the Christian belief in eternal consequence for the wicked. This is a basic difference that would affect the Egyptian treatment of the problem of evil in this world.
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Permalink Reply by Jimmy White on
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I'm looking forward to hearing your entire rebuttal of Zeitgeist. I guess the issue of greatest relevance for the "average Christian" and therefore my concern is that they hear someone attacking Christianity by showing how many of the facts of the history of Christianity [specifically Jesus] can be found in other stories predating Jesus' life. And, if you think about it, if you hear a story of inspiration from someone, and then find out later that many of the facts of their story can be found in a story from the middle ages, and a story from imperial England, and a story from the founding fathers in America, it would make you wonder if this person were making the story up using these older stories as inspiration. These stories would not have to be identical for the doubt to creep in. And them showing you where the stories differentiated, wouldn't necessarily remove the doubt.
So, do these stories of Horace and others actually exist in reliable ancient texts, or are they modern "finds" and hypotheses by modern historians rewriting history? If they do, which I honestly don't know, then it seems to me our argument must be in the establishment of the history of the living Jesus on earth versus the composed mythological figures of ancient times. One could argue that the prophesies of the old testament could have copied these myths, but it would be impossible for a living individual to control all the aspects of their life to make their life match the story of the myth [you can't control where or when you are born].
Would the writers of the new testament have even had access to these myths? Would the astrological information been available to a Matthew or a Paul, in a society not practicing an astrologically based religion? Were there even such religion around anywhere at that time in history?
It is interesting to me that Zeitgeist also attacks the reliability of the historical extra biblical accounts of Jesus. They are claiming that some of Christianity's historical accounts are simply made up, or have been proven to be forged. I've not heard any attack like this before, and am wondering if any of their attacks are true. If they are, then they really caught christianity with our pants down. We can't enter into debate and defense of our faith with supposed facts that, unknown to us, are fake. That will make our complete defense seem fraudulent.
Mary Jo Sharp said:I wrote a master's thesis on this subject. What specifically would you like to know? Plus, I have an article coming out in the Areopagus Journal on the pagan gods, Mithras, Horus, and Osiris.
Very quickly: The argument from parallels between the pagan god stories and the story of Christ bear as much weight as saying an elephant is a table because it has four legs (hat tip to John H. Oswalt who wrote, "The Bible Among the Myths). When the pagan beliefs and the Christian beliefs are set into their proper philosophical understanding of the world and man's relation to God and the earth, these stories come out much differently. For example, the term "resurrection" has different meanings in the story of Osiris versus the story of Christ. Osiris is "resurrected" to a spirit life in the underworld as god of the dead. He never returns to this life. Jesus Christ has a physical resurrection in which he returns to a physical life. He is the example of the physical resurrection. The different meanings also result in different practical outworking of their beliefs in daily life.
One huge difference between Christianity and ancient Egyptian beliefs is the judgment. Egyptians do not know until their postmortem judgment whether they have lived a good enough life. Therefore, since they are unsure of their eternal destination, they live life in the 'now.' This is evidenced in their writings and songs, such as "Harper's Songs" which encourages an eat, drink, and be merry in this life due to the insecurity of an eternity (John H. Taylor, "Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt" page 45). Also a major difference is the possibility of annihilation of the wicked. The Egyptians have a belief that the wicked are completed annihilated versus the Christian belief in eternal consequence for the wicked. This is a basic difference that would affect the Egyptian treatment of the problem of evil in this world.
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