dybmh
ויהי מבדיל בין מים למים
Yes! That's the one I watched.
Hee. That's not showing I'm wrong. That's the point where I thought to myself, ummmm I feel like I've heard myths in chinese folklore that have common elements.
Again, just because someone says it, doesn't mean it's true. i posted a link of a chinese myth with common elements. I think I posted another one with a trinity, maybe in this thread, maybe another one. Anyway.
The dying/rising demigods is a specific group and trend in the quest for eternal life. Asia and early Greek as well as Sumeria did not have an afterlife. Gods did favors (rain) but you didn't go to Heaven. In India you reincarnated.
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):
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 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).
- 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.
Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier Blogs
Easter this year lands most fittingly on April Fool’s Day. Because indeed, the resurrection of Jesus is akin to the greatest prank in history. Not because anyone actually faked it (though the evidence we have left, remains fully consistent with their having done so: see Robert Price’s chapter...www.richardcarrier.info
Hellenistic religion | Ancient Greek Gods, Rituals & Beliefs | Britannica
Hellenistic religion, any of the various systems of beliefs and practices of eastern Mediterranean peoples from 300 bc to ad 300. The period of Hellenistic influence, when taken as a whole, constitutes one of the most creative periods in the history of religions. It was a time of spiritualwww.britannica.com
It's established the Mystery religions are a product of Greek thought.
This shows all the Christian concepts come from Hellenism, a trend sweeping through all religions from 300 BC - 100Ad. This is why the "mystery religions" also had dying/rising sons/daughters of their one true God. Like Judaism they started out using Mesopotamian myths and then adopted Greek and Persian myths as well.
-the seasonal drama was homologized to a soteriology (salvation concept) concerning the destiny, fortune, and salvation of the individual after death.
-his led to a change from concern for a religion of national prosperity to one for individual salvation, from focus on a particular ethnic group to concern for every human. The prophet or saviour replaced the priest and king as the chief religious figure.
-his process was carried further through the identification of the experiences of the soul that was to be saved with the vicissitudes of a divine but fallen soul, which had to be redeemed by cultic activity and divine intervention. This view is illustrated in the concept of the paradoxical figure of the saved saviour, salvator salvandus.
-Other deities, who had previously been associated with national destiny (e.g., Zeus, Yahweh, and Isis), were raised to the status of transcendent, supreme
-The temples and cult institutions of the various Hellenistic religions were repositories of the knowledge and techniques necessary for salvation and were the agents of the public worship of a particular deity. In addition, they served an important sociological role. In the new, cosmopolitan ideology that followed Alexander’s conquests, the old nationalistic and ethnic boundaries had broken down and the problem of religious and social identity had become acute.
-Most of these groups had regular meetings for a communal meal that served the dual role of sacramental participation (referring to the use of material elements believed to convey spiritual benefits among the members and with their deity)
-Hellenistic philosophy (Stoicism, Cynicism, Neo-Aristotelianism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, and Neoplatonism) provided key formulations for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophy, theology, and mysticism through the 18th century
- The basic forms of worship of both the Jewish and Christian communities were heavily influenced in their formative period by Hellenistic practices, and this remains fundamentally unchanged to the present time. Finally, the central religious literature of both traditions—the Jewish Talmud (an authoritative compendium of law, lore, and interpretation), the New Testament, and the later patristic literature of the early Church Fathers—are characteristic Hellenistic documents both in form and content.
-Other traditions even more radically reinterpreted the ancient figures. The cosmic or seasonal drama was interiorized to refer to the divine soul within man that must be liberated.
-Each persisted in its native land with little perceptible change save for its becoming linked to nationalistic or messianic movements (centring on a deliverer figure)
-and apocalyptic traditions (referring to a belief in the dramatic intervention of a god in human and natural events)
- Particularly noticeable was the success of a variety of prophets, magicians, and healers—e.g., John the Baptist, Jesus, Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana, Alexander the Paphlagonian, and the cult of the healer Asclepius—whose preaching corresponded to the activities of various Greek and Roman philosophic missionaries
David Litwa's new book is on this as well. So is Lataster's.
Petra Pakkanen, Interpreting Early Hellenistic Religion, also writes about this.
Anyway, yes, it was mystery religion. That doesn't mean that it was copied. these elements of mystery religions existed elsewhere too.
I'm reminded of that one scholar you brought who said, Noah's flood isn't mentioned by any of the later books in Tanach. An claimed this was evidence that is was added after those books were written. And you posted the video with the quote in it, and you beleived it without double checking. And all you have to do is a bible word search for noah, and the hebrew word for flood, and bippity boppity boo, theres the references in the later books.
You see, there's reasons to claim the Jesus is a myth. Just like there's reasons to say the flood is added later. ( maybe not good reasons, but ) That reason, that specific reason about the flood not being in those later books was false. And that means that scholar you chose was not chosen for accuracy. You didn't check to see if it was accurate. You just believed it.
And then we have Carrier, making some claim about McGrath, you posted it. Didn't check to see if the very first claim in the blog was true. You didn't check. You posted it anyway because you believed it was true.
And now we have this other video. It says there weren't any other myths like this anywhere else. First of all, that makes no sense. Chinese folk religions are vast. Hindu folk stories are vast. You're telling me that you've reviewed them all? Besides that I found you an example. So just saying "You're completely wrong cause someone said so in a video." is BS dude. So the what are you saying? The wiki article is fake. That myth I brought doesn't exist.
Your scholars make mistakes like this. The last debate it was nothing but mistake, missing info, mistake, missing info, mistake, missing info.... over and over and over again. Why don't you start checking this stuff for accuracy?
