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Did Christ really exist ?

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YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
The Bible is not unreliable. It was written by sixty six different authors with the same message of seeking God. The Old and New Testament have the same message of an advocate redeemer mediator messiah.
That is true that all the books are in harmony with one another, despite being written over a long period of time, with different authors.
 

Skywalker

Well-Known Member
No humans emerged out of Africa some 100,000 years ago. Mesopotamian myths came much later then around 900BC came the Israelites version of the myths and their God myths.

The global flood story in the Bible is supported by multiple cultures have beliefs in a global flood.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
The dates of the writings of Zoraster is why the Bible wasn't influenced by them. It makes sense that Zoraster copied the Bible. People didn't recant their faith in Jesus when they were being persecuted and they had no reason to make up stories about Jesus. The same isnt true of Zoraster. Are the ideas of Jesus and Christianity borrowed from Mithra and Zoroastrianism? | GotQuestions.org


"Question: "Are the ideas of Jesus and Christianity borrowed from Mithra and Zoroastrianism?"

Answer:
Did Judaism and Christianity borrow the Messiah, the resurrection, and final judgment from Zoroastrianism / Mithra? Many doctrines of the Christian faith have parallels in Zoroastrianism, e.g., the virgin birth, the son of God, and resurrection. Some scholars say that Zarathustra (a.k.a. Zoroaster) lived around 600–500 BC. If that is the case, David, Isaiah, and Jeremiah (all of whom mention the Messiah, the resurrection and the final judgment in their writings), lived and wrote before Zarathustra. Some scholars say that Zoroaster lived sometime between 1500 and 1200 BC. If that is the case, the case for Christianity borrowing from Zoroastrianism would be stronger, but the fact is we don’t know when Zarathustra lived (hence the disagreement among scholars), and so this argument is speculative at best. The Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC) doesn’t mention Zoroaster in his treatise on the Medo-Persian religions, though Plato, who was born roughly around the time Herodotus died, do
This looks to be another case of skeptics citing a pre-Christian religion, assuming that the post-Christian form of the religion (which we know about) has remained faithful to the pre-Christian form of the religion (which we know nothing about) and speculating that the similarities between the religion and Christianity are due to Christianity borrowing from the religion in question. It’s a philosophical argument without solid evidence to back it up. Have we any good reason not to suppose that it was Zoroastrianism which borrowed from Christianity and not vice versa? We know that Zoroastrianism borrowed freely from the polytheistic faiths of the region in which it became popular. Mithra, for example, was a Persian god who found a prominent role in Zoroastrianism. Mithra’s Hindu counterpart is the god Mitra.

All philosophical arguments aside, we know that Jesus Christ was a real historical figure, that He fulfilled numerous specific prophecies written and preserved hundreds of years before His life, that He died on a cross, and that He was reported to have risen from the dead and interacted with men and women who were willing to suffer horribly and die for this testimony."


I do not care what "Gotquestions org" says? Which is an APOLOGETIC SITE?!?!?!?!?!
I am sourcing actual PhD professors in old and new testament scholarship?!
4:04 Persians influence the Jewish scribes:


Then go here to 5:00 PhD NT scholar will also explain what happened in this period. There is no question. If an apologetics site wants to ignore current scholarship and live in a fantasy world then fine, if you also don't want to know what's true then fine. These are known established facts inacademia



Mithra was not a dying/rising God at all? The gospels are not historical, all copied from Mark, anonymous, not eyewitnesses and wildly fictitious in writing style and events. They copy OT stories line by line and use myths from previous resurrected savior gods narratives.
It's all a myth.

And yes, we know the actual dates on the Persian religion. Mary Boyce, a scholar from th eUK studies in Iran for 1 year. The texts the Jewish scribes borrowed concepts from are dated back to the founder of the Persian religion. From 6 BC and before. It isn't a question.
6 dying/rising savior gods were also pre-Jesus. They forgave sins, got members into the afterlife, members were baptized into the cult, underwent a passion.

1st century apologist Justin Martyr already admitted Jesus was just like the other demigods. He just added that Jesus was the best one or the real one. Obviously they are all myths. Stories created by each culture.
 
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YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
Since nobody can keep the Ten Commandments, they were given as a mirror not as a code of perfection. We are to strive to keep the Ten Commandments, but nobody can. It pleases God when we strive for perfection even though we could never reach it.
Yup. And having inherited sin, it is not like a furry coat like an animal has that we can shake it off. But we try to adhere to God's laws. Regarding the subject of repentance, skywalker, here's something to consider: (John the Baptist speaking here)
"When he caught sight of many of the Phariseesl and Sadduceesm coming to the baptism, he said to them: “You offspring of vipers, who has warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Therefore, produce fruit that befits repentance." -- Matthew 3:8
How do feel about that? produce fruit that befits repentance. Matthew 3:8 being the idea here.
 

Skywalker

Well-Known Member
I do not care what "Gotquestions org" says? Which is an APOLOGETIC SITE?!?!?!?!?!
I am sourcing actual PhD professors in old and new testament scholarship?!
4:04 Persians influence the Jewish scribes:


Then go here to 5:00 PhD NT scholar will also explain what happened in this period. There is no question. If an apologetics site wants to ignore current scholarship and live in a fantasy world then fine, if you also don't want to know what's true then fine. These are known established facts inacademia



Mithra was not a dying/rising God at all? The gospels are not historical, all copied from Mark, anonymous, not eyewitnesses and wildly fictitious in writing style and events. They copy OT stories line by line and use myths from previous resurrected savior gods narratives.
It's all a myth.

Christianity is a gentile expression of the New Covenant of Judaism. Its not a Greek belief. Jesus is not copied from pagan gods. Osiris is not resurrected. He is changed into another state and lives in the underworld in a zombie state. Jesus was raised in glory. Its blasphemous to compare the two beliefs. Jesus is not copied from Osiris.
 

Skywalker

Well-Known Member
Yup. And having inherited sin, it is not like a furry coat like an animal has that we can shake it off. But we try to adhere to God's laws. Regarding the subject of repentance, skywalker, here's something to consider: (John the Baptist speaking here)
"When he caught sight of many of the Phariseesl and Sadduceesm coming to the baptism, he said to them: “You offspring of vipers, who has warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Therefore, produce fruit that befits repentance." -- Matthew 3:8
How do feel about that? produce fruit that befits repentance. Matthew 3:8 being the idea here.

Do you think inherited sin explains why the Old Testament judgments on the Amalekites and the Midianites were so strict?
 
Anti-Christian writings were heretical, destroyed when found and were punishable by death. Any that may have existed up until 4AD were definitely going bye bye once Christianity became law in Rome. Then in 12AD comes the Roman Catholic Church. Can you imagine that they did not welcome heretical writings?

Other than making the mistake of thinking the Empire and later Church in the pre-modern world had the ability to hunt down and destroy individual texts across vast empires, this has another problem.

If there had been a significant trend arguing Jesus never existed, one of the most likely place we would read about it is not from a preserved heretical text, but the apologetic refutations of these arguments as these would be more likely to survive.

There are quite a number of texts we only know about due to them being preserved in other texts written as refutations.
 
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YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
I do not care what "Gotquestions org" says? Which is an APOLOGETIC SITE?!?!?!?!?!
I am sourcing actual PhD professors in old and new testament scholarship?!
4:04 Persians influence the Jewish scribes:


Then go here to 5:00 PhD NT scholar will also explain what happened in this period. There is no question. If an apologetics site wants to ignore current scholarship and live in a fantasy world then fine, if you also don't want to know what's true then fine. These are known established facts inacademia



Mithra was not a dying/rising God at all? The gospels are not historical, all copied from Mark, anonymous, not eyewitnesses and wildly fictitious in writing style and events. They copy OT stories line by line and use myths from previous resurrected savior gods narratives.
It's all a myth.
I've seen those arguments made by some who reject the reasoning because "it's a creationist site," _ or something similar, but looking on the reasoning would do well for a thinking, thoughtful person rather than rejecting it because the person believes in a creator.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
T

All philosophical arguments aside, we know that Jesus Christ was a real historical figure, that He fulfilled numerous specific prophecies written and preserved hundreds of years before His life, that He died on a cross, and that He was reported to have risen from the dead and interacted with men and women who were willing to suffer horribly and die for this testimony."


While historians debate over weather a man named Jesus was a teacher at the time and was later mythicized into a demigod, no historian believes in the gospel version of Jesus.:


"When the question of the historicity of Jesus comes up in an honest professional context, we are not asking whether the Gospel Jesus existed. All non-fundamentalist scholars agree that that Jesus never did exist. Christian apologetics is pseudo-history. No different than defending Atlantis. Or Moroni. Or women descending from Adam’s rib.

No. We aren’t interested in that.

When it comes to Jesus, just as with anyone else, real history is about trying to figure out what, if anything, we can really know about the man depicted in the New Testament (his actual life and teachings), through untold layers of distortion and mythmaking; and what, if anything, we can know about his role in starting the Christian movement that spread after his death."

PhD Carrier
 

YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
Do you think inherited sin explains why the Old Testament judgments on the Amalekites and the Midianites were so strict?
Well let me ask you this: do you think WW1 and 2 and other wars are due to inherited sin? Ok it's time for me to sign off, nice talking to you
 

Skywalker

Well-Known Member
While historians debate over weather a man named Jesus was a teacher at the time and was later mythicized into a demigod, no historian believes in the gospel version of Jesus.:


"When the question of the historicity of Jesus comes up in an honest professional context, we are not asking whether the Gospel Jesus existed. All non-fundamentalist scholars agree that that Jesus never did exist. Christian apologetics is pseudo-history. No different than defending Atlantis. Or Moroni. Or women descending from Adam’s rib.

No. We aren’t interested in that.

When it comes to Jesus, just as with anyone else, real history is about trying to figure out what, if anything, we can really know about the man depicted in the New Testament (his actual life and teachings), through untold layers of distortion and mythmaking; and what, if anything, we can know about his role in starting the Christian movement that spread after his death."

PhD Carrier

A false reason for the Bible being true doesn't change the valid reasons. Quoted from answers in Genesis. Women Have More Ribs Than Men

"Women Have More Ribs Than Men
Do women really have an extra rib?

One of the most persistent arguments used by many to “prove” the Bible is true is that women have more ribs than men. This “fact” is glibly repeated over coffee and donuts or innocently recited to children in Sunday School. After all, the Bible does say that woman was made from one of Adam’s ribs.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. (Genesis 2:21-22)
These verses tell us how God made the first woman. But would women from that point have more ribs than men? No.

If someone accidentally cut off a finger or lost an arm or leg in an accident, would we expect children he had after the loss to be missing a finger, arm, or leg? If a man has an appendix or gall bladder removed, would his children be born without these organs? Of course, no one would even suggest such a thing. However, in the case of Adam and his rib, this unsupportable concept continues to be propagated.

Adam continued to have the genetic information for a complete set of ribs. This genetic information was passed on to his offspring, both male and female. Thus his offspring should have had complete sets of ribs.

The most basic picture book of the human body shows even young children that women and men have the same number of ribs. Observations in the present world thus instantly disprove this anatomic legend. Since the rib fable is so readily refuted with simple anatomic facts, we wonder why many well-meaning Christians continue to spread it.

The rib fable is definitely an argument Christians should not use."
 

Skywalker

Well-Known Member
Well let me ask you this: do you think WW1 and 2 and other wars are due to inherited sin? Ok it's time for me to sign off, nice talking to you

I meant that the belief that the Amalekites and Midianites were accountable for their community sins.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
I've seen those arguments made by some who reject the reasoning because "it's a creationist site," _ or something similar, but looking on the reasoning would do well for a thinking, thoughtful person rather than rejecting it because the person believes in a creator.
I looked at the argument. It completely ignores all scholarship. There is no question of teh dates of the Persian writings. There is no debate about the Persians influencing the OT in 5BC.
There are apologetics who use no sources and question dates haphazardly or literally lie.

There is a Professor of the Hebrew Bible sitting in a chair explaining the dates and even using the text of the bible as a source. It's what the bible itself says? Yet apologetics ignores even that to construct a false argument.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
The global flood story in the Bible is supported by multiple cultures have beliefs in a global flood.


No multiple cultures have the flood myth. Multiple cultures have the myths about a boy with plumes who dies and a fruit tree grows in his place. It's all over the Pacifc myths. They are still not real.

A world flood is refuted by science on many many levels. So it's a myth. It's a story about change, growth and transformation.
The world serpent doesn't mean a giant snake is in the sky.
 

Skywalker

Well-Known Member
I looked at the argument. It completely ignores all scholarship. There is no question of teh dates of the Persian writings. There is no debate about the Persians influencing the OT in 5BC.
There are apologetics who use no sources and question dates haphazardly or literally lie.

There is a Professor of the Hebrew Bible sitting in a chair explaining the dates and even using the text of the bible as a source. It's what the bible itself says? Yet apologetics ignores even that to construct a false argument.

The arguments for Jesus being based off of pagan gods are based off of false arguments. Mithras was born of a rock, not of a virgin. The Pagan Connection: Did Christianity Borrow from the Mystery Religions?

"Myths of a Virgin Birth
Let us now look-at the alleged parallels between virgin births in the mystery religions and the virgin birth of Christ. Parallels quickly break down when the facts are analyzed. In the pagan myths, the gods lust after women, take on human form, and enter into physical relationships. Also, the offspring that are produced are half human and half divine beings in contrast to Christ who is fully human and fully divine, the creator of the universe who existed from eternity past.

The alleged parallels to the virgin birth are found in the legends of Dionysus and Mithras. Dionysus is the god of wine. In this story, Zeus disguised as a man had relations with Semele and she became pregnant. In a jealous rage, Hera, Zeus’ wife, attempted to burn Semele. Zeus rescued the fetus and sewed it into his thigh until the offspring, Dionysus, was born. The birth of Dionysus was the result of a sexual union of Zeus, in the form of a man, and Semele. This cannot be considered a virgin birth.

One of the popular cults of the later Roman Empire was the cult of Mithra which originated in Persia. Mithra was supposedly born when he emerged from a rock; he was carrying a knife and torch and wearing a Phrygian cap. He battled first with the sun and then with a primeval bull, thought to be the first act of creation. Mithra slew the bull, which then became the ground of life for the human race.{16} The birth of Mithra from a rock, born fully grown, hardly parallels the virgin birth of Christ.

New Testament scholar. Raymond Brown states that alleged virgin parallels “consistently involve a type of hieros gamoswhere a divine male, in human or other form, impregnates a woman, either through normal sexual intercourse or through some substitute form of penetration. They are not really similar to non-sexual virginal conception that is at the core of the infancy narratives, a conception where there is no male deity or element to impregnate Mary.”{17}

The Gospel of Luke teaches that the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and through the power of the Most High she became pregnant. Mary had no physical relationship with a man or a deity who became a man.

Our study of the mystery religions reveals very few parallels with Christianity. For this reason, the theory that Christianity copied its major tenets from the mystery religions should be rejected."
 

Skywalker

Well-Known Member
No multiple cultures have the flood myth. Multiple cultures have the myths about a boy with plumes who dies and a fruit tree grows in his place. It's all over the Pacifc myths. They are still not real.

A world flood is refuted by science on many many levels. So it's a myth. It's a story about change, growth and transformation.
The world serpent doesn't mean a giant snake is in the sky.

The global blood belief is scientific because of the fountains of the deep. The Bible and scientists both talk about it. Scientists Confirm Biblical Account of the ‘Fountains of The Deep’
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
Christianity is a gentile expression of the New Covenant of Judaism. Its not a Greek belief. Jesus is not copied from pagan gods. Osiris is not resurrected. He is changed into another state and lives in the underworld in a zombie state. Jesus was raised in glory. Its blasphemous to compare the two beliefs. Jesus is not copied from Osiris.

Osirus from PhD Carrier using original source text (Pyramid text):

Osiris. Clearly raised from the dead in his original, deceased body, restored to life; visiting people on earth in his risen body; and then ruling from heaven above. And that directly adjacent to Judea, amidst a major Jewish population in Alexandria, and popular across the whole empire. But as Plutarch said in On the E at Delphi 9, many religions of his day “narrate deaths and vanishings, followed by returns to life and resurrections.” Not just that one. Plutarch names Dionysus as but an example (and by other names “Zagreus, Nyctelius, and Isodaetes“). And we know for a fact this Dionysus wasn’t the only example Plutarch would have known. Plutarch only names him because he was so closely associated with Osiris, and the most famous.

Not only does Plutarch say Osiris returned to life and was recreated, exact terms for resurrection (anabiôsis and paliggenesia: On Isis and Osiris 35; see my discussion in The Empty Tomb, pp. 154-55), and also describe his physically returning to earth after his death (Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 19), but the physical resurrection of Osiris’s corpse is explicitly described in pre-Christian pyramid inscriptions!"



The pagan gods are Hellenized versions of each religion. This myths started with the Greeks. Features include:
Not in ancient Asia. Or anywhere else. Only the West, from Mesopotamia to North Africa and Europe. There was a very common and popular mytheme that had arisen in the Hellenistic period—from at least the death of Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. through the Roman period, until at least Constantine in the 300s A.D. Nearly every culture created and popularized one: the Egyptians had one, the Thracians had one, the Syrians had one, the Persians had one, and so on. The Jews were actually late to the party in building one of their own, in the form of Jesus Christ. It just didn’t become popular among the Jews, and thus ended up a Gentile religion. But if any erudite religious scholar in 1 B.C. had been asked “If the Jews invented one of these gods, what would it look like?” they would have described the entire Christian religion to a T. Before it even existed. That can’t be a coincidence.

The general features most often shared by all these cults are (when we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

  • They are personal salvation cults (often evolved from prior agricultural cults).
  • They guarantee the individual a good place in the afterlife (a concern not present in most prior forms of religion).
  • They are cults you join membership with (as opposed to just being open communal religions).
  • They enact a fictive kin group (members are now all brothers and sisters).
  • They are joined through baptism (the use of water-contact rituals to effect an initiation).
  • They are maintained through communion (regular sacred meals enacting the presence of the god).
  • They involved secret teachings reserved only to members (and some only to members of certain rank).
  • They used a common vocabulary to identify all these concepts and their role.
  • They are syncretistic (they modify this common package of ideas with concepts distinctive of the adopting culture).
  • They are mono- or henotheistic (they preach a supreme god by whom and to whom all other divinities are created and subordinate).
  • They are individualistic (they relate primarily to salvation of the individual, not the community).
  • And they are cosmopolitan (they intentionally cross social borders of race, culture, nation, wealth, or even gender).
You might start to notice we’ve almost completely described Christianity already. It gets better. These cults all had a common central savior deity, who shared most or all these features (when, once again, we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

  • They are all “savior gods” (literally so-named and so-called).
  • They are usually the “son” of a supreme God (or occasionally “daughter”).
  • They all undergo a “passion” (a “suffering” or “struggle,” literally the same word in Greek, patheôn).
  • That passion is often, but not always, a death (followed by a resurrection and triumph).
  • By which “passion” (of whatever kind) they obtain victory over death.
  • Which victory they then share with their followers (typically through baptism and communion).
  • They also all have stories about them set in human history on earth.
  • Yet so far as we can tell, none of them ever actually existed.
 

Skywalker

Well-Known Member
Osirus from PhD Carrier using original source text (Pyramid text):

Osiris. Clearly raised from the dead in his original, deceased body, restored to life; visiting people on earth in his risen body; and then ruling from heaven above. And that directly adjacent to Judea, amidst a major Jewish population in Alexandria, and popular across the whole empire. But as Plutarch said in On the E at Delphi 9, many religions of his day “narrate deaths and vanishings, followed by returns to life and resurrections.” Not just that one. Plutarch names Dionysus as but an example (and by other names “Zagreus, Nyctelius, and Isodaetes“). And we know for a fact this Dionysus wasn’t the only example Plutarch would have known. Plutarch only names him because he was so closely associated with Osiris, and the most famous.

Not only does Plutarch say Osiris returned to life and was recreated, exact terms for resurrection (anabiôsis and paliggenesia: On Isis and Osiris 35; see my discussion in The Empty Tomb, pp. 154-55), and also describe his physically returning to earth after his death (Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 19), but the physical resurrection of Osiris’s corpse is explicitly described in pre-Christian pyramid inscriptions!"



The pagan gods are Hellenized versions of each religion. This myths started with the Greeks. Features include:
Not in ancient Asia. Or anywhere else. Only the West, from Mesopotamia to North Africa and Europe. There was a very common and popular mytheme that had arisen in the Hellenistic period—from at least the death of Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. through the Roman period, until at least Constantine in the 300s A.D. Nearly every culture created and popularized one: the Egyptians had one, the Thracians had one, the Syrians had one, the Persians had one, and so on. The Jews were actually late to the party in building one of their own, in the form of Jesus Christ. It just didn’t become popular among the Jews, and thus ended up a Gentile religion. But if any erudite religious scholar in 1 B.C. had been asked “If the Jews invented one of these gods, what would it look like?” they would have described the entire Christian religion to a T. Before it even existed. That can’t be a coincidence.

The general features most often shared by all these cults are (when we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

  • They are personal salvation cults (often evolved from prior agricultural cults).
  • They guarantee the individual a good place in the afterlife (a concern not present in most prior forms of religion).
  • They are cults you join membership with (as opposed to just being open communal religions).
  • They enact a fictive kin group (members are now all brothers and sisters).
  • They are joined through baptism (the use of water-contact rituals to effect an initiation).
  • They are maintained through communion (regular sacred meals enacting the presence of the god).
  • They involved secret teachings reserved only to members (and some only to members of certain rank).
  • They used a common vocabulary to identify all these concepts and their role.
  • They are syncretistic (they modify this common package of ideas with concepts distinctive of the adopting culture).
  • They are mono- or henotheistic (they preach a supreme god by whom and to whom all other divinities are created and subordinate).
  • They are individualistic (they relate primarily to salvation of the individual, not the community).
  • And they are cosmopolitan (they intentionally cross social borders of race, culture, nation, wealth, or even gender).
You might start to notice we’ve almost completely described Christianity already. It gets better. These cults all had a common central savior deity, who shared most or all these features (when, once again, we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

  • They are all “savior gods” (literally so-named and so-called).
  • They are usually the “son” of a supreme God (or occasionally “daughter”).
  • They all undergo a “passion” (a “suffering” or “struggle,” literally the same word in Greek, patheôn).
  • That passion is often, but not always, a death (followed by a resurrection and triumph).
  • By which “passion” (of whatever kind) they obtain victory over death.
  • Which victory they then share with their followers (typically through baptism and communion).
  • They also all have stories about them set in human history on earth.
  • Yet so far as we can tell, none of them ever actually existed.

The resurrection of Jesus was predicted as early as the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah, not copied from pagan religions. The Resurrection: “According to the Scriptures”?

"RESURRECTION OF THE MESSIAH IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
While there is a generally agreed-upon theology of resurrection in the Old Testament (cf. Job 19:25–27; Ps 49:15; 73:23–28; Isa 25:8; 26:19; Ezek 37:1–14; Hos 13:14; Dan 12:1–4 etc.), connections between Psalm 16:10 and Psalm 22, and Isaiah 53:10–11 and Daniel 12:2–3 reveal that the Messiah, in particular, would be raised from the dead.

Psalm 16:10
David’s prayer of trust in Yahweh climaxes with the confidence, “For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption” (Ps 16:10). Some contest the idea of resurrection in this verse in favor of salvation from mortal danger. But the verb “abandon” (עזב) along with the preposition “לְ” refers to leaving someone behind (cf. Jb 39:14). David’s hope is that he would not be left in the realm of the dead. He doesn’t merely want to be saved from an immediate physical danger but to overcome death. In other words, David envisioned resurrection.

The way this verse relates to the Messiah is first through the messianic promise of the Davidic Covenant (2 Sam 7:12–16), which functions as the basis for David’s trust (cf. 16:1). The word “your holy one” (חֲ֝סִידְךָ) is a unique Messianic title in the Hebrew Bible that never refers to David.

The parallelism between David and God’s holy one in Psalm 16:10 is similar to Psalm 4:3 (Heb., v. 4). God hears David’s prayer because He set apart the holy ones (חָסִ֣יד) for Himself. David is one of the holy ones who benefits from God’s actions for them. In the same way, Psalm 16 argues that David’s resurrection is guaranteed by God’s raising of His holy one, the Messiah. Psalm 16:10 is an explicit text in the Old Testament that brings together the concepts of resurrection and the Messiah. Psalm 22 is proof that this kind of thinking was not isolated but interconnected. The promise of the Messiah’s resurrection is set into motion in Psalm 22.

Psalm 22
There is a confident hope that neither David nor the Messiah would be forsaken (עזב) or given over to experience the corruption in Psalm 16:10. But Psalm 22 presents a situation which endangers that hope, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken (עזב) me?” But for the logic of Psalm 16 to work, the forsaking must refer to being abandoned in Sheol—the psalmist or the referent of Psalm 16:10b (the Messiah) has to die. Psalm 22 describes that death in detail (22:12–21). However, Psalm 22 advances to life after death (22:22-31). That is only explainable by the resurrection.

David’s life does not fulfill the details of this psalm, which speak of execution and death. It must refer to the Davidic Messiah. The Messiah’s resurrection was David’s confidence for his own, and by extension, the hope of all of Israel. Isaiah writes about the Messiah carrying the destiny of all of Israel and the world in his death and resurrection.

Isaiah 53:10–11
The Davidic Messiah who suffers, dies (Ps 22:12–21), and is raised (Ps 16:10; 22:22–21) is Isaiah’s suffering Servant. Building on previous revelation, Isaiah 53:10–11 describes his death and resurrection as part of Yahweh’s will. It pleased Him to crush the Servant. That this crushing led to death is made explicit in 53:9, “And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death” —he was buried; burial confirms death in addition to the crucifixion. Isaiah, along with the Psalms, confirms that the Messiah would die. However, the Davidic Covenant would fail if the Messiah stays dead (cf. 2 Sam 7:12–13). His resurrection becomes critical to fulfilling God’s promises.

Therefore, Isaiah also prophesies his resurrection—“he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand” (Isa 53:10b). How can he “see” his offspring if he is executed unless he is resurrected? The verb “prolong” (אָרֵך) is sometimes used to refer to an everlasting (resurrected) afterlife (Ps 23:6; 91:16), and portrays the Servant’s resurrection here. In fact, this verse echoes Psalm 22:30 (Heb., v. 31) where the “seed” (זֶרַע) are mentioned in connection to his resurrection.

Verse 11 posits that the Servant’s death and resurrection will justify many as righteous. This tie between the Messiah’s resurrection and the people’s justification in Isaiah 53:10–11 leads us to perhaps the clearest passage in the Hebrew Bible about the resurrection—Daniel 12:2–3.

Daniel 12:2–3
Once a connection is established between Isaiah 53:10–11 and Daniel 12:2–3, a strong case emerges for the resurrection of the Messiah himself. Daniel 12:3 refers to the saints as “those who are wise” (הַ֨מַּשְׂכִּלִ֔ים), just as the Servant is said to “act wisely” (יַשְׂכִּ֖יל) in Isaiah 52:13. The Servant is said to make people righteous (צַדִּ֛יק Isa 53:11), and the saints turn many to righteousness (מַצְדִּיקֵי Dn 12:3).

The Servant in Isaiah who is also the one like a son of man in Daniel is inseparably attached to his people. Daniel has a theology of corporate solidarity between the one like a son of man (Dn 7:13) and the saints of the Most High (Dn 7:18). Whatever is true of the son of man figure is true of the saints—dominion was given to the one like a son of man (Dn 7:14), but the angel interprets the dream to mean the saints receive the dominion (Dn 7:18). The saints benefit from the work of the Servant/Son of Man. Therefore, the resurrection of the saints in Daniel 12:2–3 is made possible by the death and resurrection of the Messiah.

To say that the Davidic Covenant plays an important role in the Hebrew Bible would be an understatement. It follows, then, that the resurrection of the Messiah, which is critical to the Davidic Covenant as seen in the Psalms, Isaiah and Daniel, occupies a major role in the messianic expectations of the Old Testament Scriptures."
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
.. they didn't recant even in persecution, and multiple people don't hallucinate the same thing.
They were not with him, they just ran away abandoning him. All eleven forsook him. And multiple people can hallucinate together about some thing.
Perceptions of religious imagery in natural phenomena - Wikipedia

In India Gods and Goddesses drink milk.
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joelr

Well-Known Member
The arguments for Jesus being based off of pagan gods are based off of false arguments. Mithras wasborn of a rock, not of a virgin. The Pagan Connection: Did Christianity Borrow from the Mystery Religions?

scholarship on Mithras:
Other savior gods within this context experienced “passions” that did not involve a death. For instance, Mithras underwent some great suffering and struggle (we don’t have many details), through which he acquired his power over death that he then shares with initiates in his cult, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a death. Mentions of resurrection as a teaching in Mithraism appear to have been about the future fate of his followers (in accordance with the Persian Zoroastrian notion of a general resurrection later borrowed by the Jews). So all those internet memes listing Mithras as a dying-and-rising god? Not true.

"Myths of a Virgin Birth

Carrier rebuttles the claim of Brown (not a PhD historian) and completely shows the Jesus birth is taken from Pagan ideas:
The virgin birth myth for Jesus was, certainly, almost entirely modeled on Jewish precedents, both in and out of the Bible—from the miraculous impregnation of Sarah in the OT, to the miraculous conception of Moses in Philo’s Life of Moses and the Biblical Antiquities. But it was a syncretic creation, combining those Jewish elements, with pagan, producing a hybrid, just like every other instance of cultural diffusion (e.g. the way the Romans altered the Athena story when adapting it to Minerva): something different from anything before, yet fully explained by all its precedents. I should also add, for those who will inevitably ask, yes, it’s true, the original Hebrew scriptures did not predict a virgin birth, although their Greek translations could still have inspired the idea, evidencing a third source, the paganized Judaism of Hellenism:
Virgin Birth: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier

"New Testament scholar. Raymond Brown states that alleged virgin parallels “consistently involve a type of hieros gamoswhere a divine male, in human or other form, impregnates a woman, either through normal sexual intercourse or through some substitute form of penetration. They are not really similar to non-sexual virginal conception that is at the core of the infancy narratives, a conception where there is no male deity or element to impregnate Mary.”{17}

His apologetics is not accepted in the historicity field and has been shown to be false.Virgin Birth: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier
The Gospel of Luke teaches that the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and through the power of the Most High she became pregnant. Mary had no physical relationship with a man or a deity who became a man.

Our study of the mystery religions reveals very few parallels with Christianity. For this reason, the theory that Christianity copied its major tenets from the mystery religions should be rejected."


Luke is the most agregious in copying narratives from the OT. It's total fiction.
As I have shown Jesus is just another late comer to the savior god trend and all of them are fiction.[/QUOTE]
 
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