Horus
Horus Myth’s Myth
- Horus was born of a virgin Isis on December 25th
- Had 12 disciples
- Crucified, dead, and resurrected on the 3rd day
Horus Myth’s Facts:
- Born of a widow Isis, who revived her murdered husband Osiris to conceive Horus. Born on 5th days of Epagomenal Days, August 24th and 28th.
- Had 4 semi-gods(heru-shemsu), 16 human and unnumbered blacksmiths(Mesniu) as his followers.
- Did not die. He merged with the sun god, Ra and was thereafter known as Re-Horakhty.
Attis Myth’s Myth:
- Born of virgin Nana on December 25 th
- Crucified, dead, resurrected on the 3rd day.
Attis
Attis Myth’s Facts:
- Complicate. Nana was impregnated by almond fruits from a tree that grew from a chopped manhood of Agdistis.
- No crucifixion. Dies every winter and rises(born) again every spring. Winter is longer than 3 days
- Spring is not in December
Krishna Myth’s Myth:
- Born of a virgin Devaki on December 25th
- Upon his death was resurrected
Krishna Myth’s Facts:
- The eighth son, born of princess Devaki, and fathered by Vasudeva.
- Traditional belief and scriptural detail places his birth on Janmashtami 19th or 21st July 3228 B.C.
- Mistaken as a deer by a brave hunter Jara, who shot him at the heel and killed Krishna .
- Krishna died and his soul directly ascend to heaven living the body behind.
Dionysos
Dionysus Myth’s Myth:
- Born of a virgin on December 25th
- Upon his death, resurrected
Dionysus Myth’s Facts:
- Not born of a virgin, Dionysus mortal mother Semele, daughter of Cadmus was in relationship with Zeus.
- Dies every winter just to rise again in spring
- Dionysus was a god of wine, therefore he did change water to wine.
Mithra Myth’s Myth:
- Born of Virgin, on December 25th.
- Had 12 disciples.
- Upon his death, was buried for 3 days and thus resurrected.
Mithra Myth’s Facts:
- Roman’s Mithra was chopped out of a rock as a fully grown man.
- Iranian’s Mithra is said to be born a virgin Anahita. This is unlikely because Anahita was sometimes regarded as his consort(royal mate)
- Did not die. After his mission, he was taken to paradise in a chariot alive and well.
Mithra
N.B: December 25th was adopted by catholic church around 300 A.D, probably for easy acceptability of new Christians coming from paganism.
Copy-Cat Myth lovers, read the original or copies of original manuscripts and find out for yourself. In sources below I have listed some of Universities or Museums that have translate some of the manuscripts.
Sources:
Books:
Budge, E. A. Wallis. Egyptian Religion. Kessinger, 1900.
Mithraic Studies: Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies. Manchester U. Press, 1975.
The Gods of Egypt. Claude Traunecker. Cornell:2001.
The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa; translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli(published between 1883 and 1896
Online sites:
The University of Texas: Old Iranian Hymns: Avestan: Yasna and Young Avestan
http://www.earth-history.com/Egypt/Legends/gods-10summary5.htm
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Isis_and_Osiris*/A.html
http://www.philae.nu/akhet/Calendar.html
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/FDOT.html
http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/frivs/latin/latin-dict-full.html#V
http://www.clarkfoundation.org/astro-utah/vondel/virgo.html
http://theoi.com/Olympios/AphroditeLoves2.html
“Anahita” created on 03 March 1997; last modified on 25 July 2004 (Revision 2). 155 words by Micha F. Lindemans
Recommend Blog: Conspiracy Science: A Non-Christian site dedicated in refuting all kinds of conspiracy.
With All I Am 
Christianity is guilty of plagiarism of the highest order–they stole everythn from paganism.But paganism ironically still survives today in Christianity.The history of Christianity is replete with forgery,deception,delusion and Sugar Candy Mountain! Its collapse is imminent.
Ah, I forgot to subscribe, so I know if you reply.
Jesus was the “only begotten son” of the god Yahweh.
Horus was the “only begotten son” of the god Osiris.
The mother of Jesus was Mary. Sometimes referred to as Maria (Gospel of Mark) or Miriam.
The mother of Horus was Meri.
The foster father of Jesus was Joseph
The foster father of Horus was Jo-Seph
The birth of Jesus was heralded by a star in the East (where the Sun rises in the morning)
The birth of Horus was heralded by the star Sirius (the morning star)
After the birth of Jesus, Herod tried to have him murdered
After the birth of Horus, Herut tried to have him murdered
Jesus was taken from the desert in Palestine up a high mountain to be tempted by his arch-nemesis Satan.
Horus was taken from the desert of Amenta up a high mountain to be tempted by his arch-rival Set.
Jesus was known as the Christ (which means “anointed one”)
Horus is known as KRST, the anointed one.
Jesus is identified with the Tau (cross)
Horus was identified with the Tau
Hej Garbonzo,
Thank you for the parallels. Before I comment on each parallels, I would like to know the following:
1. Where are you getting this from?
2. If from scholars, why should I trust their statements as fact, what arguments do they give?
3. Could you direct me to the primary sources to were you(or the scholars) got these parallels? Is it from Plutarch’s “Concerning Isis and Osiris” or Hunefer Papyrus or …?
I would like to know this because it would help us to respectably and kindly look at this issue critically.
Thank you Garbonzon again for your input.
In Christ,
Prayson
Prayson,
You confirm Dionysus turning water into wine, but I’m wondering what your source is. I’ve tried tracking this one down and the earliest possible reference I could find was by Achilles Tatius in the Greek Romance, “The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon” which was written in the 2nd century A.D. It mentions a Tyranian myth about Dionysus introducing wine to the world, with Dionysus calling it “the water of summer” and saying, “This is the water, this is the spring”. But Dionysus isn’t actually turning water into wine here – he’s simply referring to wine as a type of water. And it’s also unclear if this really was an earlier Tyranian myth, or something Tatius was inventing for his story. Do you have any early source for Dionysus actually turning water into wine?
David
Hej David,
Thank you for your comment. The article above aimed only on checking for the actual records of the myths. I took both before and after Christ.
The only source that “suggest” that he change water to wine is Plutarch, Life of Lysander 28. 4 (trans. Perrin)(Greek historian C1st to C2nd A.D.)
No original source, and as other copy-cat theorist claims, its not as clear as they want it to be.
In Christ,
Prayson
Recommend: http://www.theoi.com
Noreligion,
Titles like “historical revisionist/conspiracist” are ridiculous coming from someone who has yet to provide a single source for the mythological similarity theory. Between the lack of evidence to your petty insults, I am having a really hard time taking anything you are saying seriously.
MrPopularSentiment, glad you mentioned Joseph of Aramathea. In Mark 15:43 the Greek used for Joseph of Aramathea was Joseph apo Arimathias which was clearly taken word for word from the genealogy of Josephus in section 1 of Life. Which translated says Joseph begat Matthias. But then again according to Prayson the historical revisionist/conspiracist, there is no mythology or fraud in the New Testament.
So I take it noreligion ran out of arguments and decided to instead mock some more and never return. This is typically what happens when you ask people to provide the source evidence of these crazy comparisons. On top of all that, he ironically decided to end by calling the author a “conspiracy theorist”. Priceless!!!
Thank you Prayson Daniel for the helpful article and MrPopularSentiment for the additional information. It’s nice to see that someone decided to engage in an adult conversation.
Thank you so much Russell for you comment.
I hope and pray that Noreligion would return so we could engage with love, respect and gentleness.
He wrote an article Resurrection Myth, and there he got also another guy who engage with him with great respect.
Thank you for the comment 🙂
I’m both an atheist and an amateur mythologist, and I have to say that the overly simplistic (and sometimes plain made-up) parallels that some atheists draw between Jesus and other myths really bugs me.
I don’t think it’s important to say that Jesus’s apotheosis was stolen from anyone for it to be a clear process of mythologising. I think it may simply be some atheists who don’t understand how easily myth creation can happen trying fishing for explanations.
It’s silly to require that the Christ story directly mimics other myths. It’s more than enough to see how the themes of myth have been applied. For example, the idea that a man who is considered so special was born in the same dirty, icky way as the rest of us is inconceivable (pun intended), so we see that many historical figures who achieve what some consider to be great things have special stories attached to their conception or birth. This was
PS: “whom revived her killed husband Osiris” is incorrect. You want to use “who.” The trick to being able to tell whether to use “who” or “whom” is to reconstruct the sentence using “he” or “him.” If you would use “him,” you should use “whom.” So in this cause, you would say “he revived her killed husband.”
Thank you for the correction.
The Jesus’ story was recorded so early for it to be turn into legend. If you want to read a legend like Jesus story read the Gospel of Peter.
Thank you so much for your comment 🙂
You don’t give people enough credit. Mythologizing can happen very quickly. For proof, we need only look at grieving families, many of whom will claim to see their deceased loved ones – not in any metaphorical sense, but bodily.
So in the case of Jesus, it is perfectly consistent with human psychology to imagine a resurrection or ascension when a truly beloved preacher and leader dies, particularly if that death was sudden and violent.
I’d say that a good proof that this is the case is that we don’t have an empty tomb. The Biblical account tells us that the followers knew where the tomb was. I have trouble seeing them not making it a place of worship if Jesus was truly resurrected. Rather, I think it’s more likely that Jesus, like most criminals killed by the Romans, was dumped in a mass grave and that no tomb was ever known to his followers. So when they “saw” Jesus, in the same way that you or I might “see” our dead grandma, the had no body to confirm that they were merely expressing grief.
I don’t know what happened, and neither do you. However, we have the choice between a perfectly plausible theory that is consistent with a phenomenon that we often witness today, or believing in a fantastical story of spirits, angels, and corpses coming back to life. Were we not steeped in a Christian culture, I think it’s obvious which one we could legitimately assume is more likely to be true.
And you’re welcome 😀
Hej 🙂
You have trouble seeing them not making it a place of worship simply because they believed Jesus was truly resurrected.
Remember if Jesus did not resurrected then we would expect them to make his grave a place of worship or find a new Messiah or abandon the mission 🙂
Mass Grave theory by John Dominic Crossan is ad hoc, and I posted an article on my blog dealing with it: Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
Hallucination happens individually and not in a group, thus you might “see” your dead grandma, but others next to you would not.
More, Saul of Tarsus(Paul) had no reason to hallucinate on the ground of expressing grief as a matter of fact, he hated and persecuted any one who had to do with the “blaspheming man”.
Super thank you again for great inputs 🙂 It is my hope Atheist and Christian can have love, respect and gentleness as the share each others view. Thank you for your tune Mr, Popular Sentiment.
Prayson
The empty tomb is central to early Christian theology. You said so yourself! You really think that no one would see the place of that happening as a place worthy of remembering?
The death of a founder would not make them abandon their mission. Did the Muslims drop Islam when Muhammad died? Did the Mormons abandon theirs when Joseph Smith died? It’s an absurd suggestion that the non-miraculous death of a charismatic preacher would lead simply to the end of the movement… Unless you are suggesting that both Muhammad and Joseph Smith were also resurrected?
Hallucinations are complicated things. First of all, if you have a bunch of cousins seeing grandma, they may well talk about it and share their experiences. Secondly, there’s the power of suggestibility. People will actually alter their memories of events based on later conversation, so there’s no reason to assume that books written a generation later would be accurate pictures of what truly happened. And, finally, mass hallucinations do happen. Multi-witness miracles are found in most religions, and Dan Everett in Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes talks about the whole tribe seeing spirits that he couldn’t see, and even able to corroborate details of each other’s visions.
Like I said, you have too little faith in the human mind.
Paul was steeped in Christianity precisely because of his position as an aggressor. Conversion stories of persecutor to persecuted are a dime a dozen, and most religions have them.
Thank you for giving me a place to express my ideas and for responding so thoughtfully 🙂
Hej 🙂
It is the resurrection of Jesus that is central to early Christianity theology and the whole Christian faith. The tomb location was known by the women and other followers, and in the post I sent to you, you can see that Joseph of Arimathea was unlikely person to include in the story if it was a made up story
On abandoning the mission: You have over looked the historical ground of a culture. There were many claims of Messiah-ship before Jesus the Galilean in Israel, but after the movement leader was killed the movement died. 🙂
Hallucinations does not happen to a group, it is an individual experience just like a dream, therefore you can not have a bunch of cousins seeing grandma. 🙂 A critical work done to refute this theory can also be found in my blog Visions of Jesus: A Critical Assessment of Gerd Lüdemann’s Hallucination Hypothesis
You are always welcome to share your ideas, and I hope I could share mine. Thank you so much for your respect, love and gentleness in your comments.
Prayson
You’re assuming that Joseph of Arimathea would have been an unlikely addition while sitting two thousand years removed from the community that wrote the account. I also have trouble seeing what would be so unlikely about him…
If I were to allow myself some baseless speculation, it could be that he offered some kind words (or even material support) to the community of Jesus’ followers and his kindness was carried onwards and reinterpreted by that community. Who knows? But the point is that we’re too far removed to be able to say with any kind of certainty that the community, a community we know almost nothing about, would have had no reason to include Joseph of Arimathea in their tale.
We know that the Christian mission was not abandoned. The fact that some missions were abandoned on the death of the follower does not prove that the claims of Christianity must be true if we can find examples of other religions’ missions that were not abandoned. I gave you two examples of this. It stands to reason that those missions not abandoned are the ones that have become established religions…
I also gave you specific examples of group hallucinations, as well as alternative examples (such as suggestibility). I hope that you took the time to read my post and that I simply did not make myself clear, because the alternative – that you read my specific examples and then chose to ignore them because they contradict your beliefs – is not very flattering to you.
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C.S. Lewis was not fazed by the apparent myriad of pre-Christ dying-and-rising-god myths. He said that such myths were likely to have been prefigurements of Christ given by God to the pagan imagination. Any anyway, even if they aren’t, that does not cast doubt on the historicity of the New Testament. Literary criticism is the weakest and most subjective of historians’ methods of establishing the historical reliability of ancient documents.
The comparison between the Christ myth and other myths isn’t literary criticism. Literary criticism is the method by which versions of the text are compared.
But leaving that aside, what would you consider to be a stronger method?
The same way that we establish that any event in the past occurred, historical evidence (Cf. http://wp.me/pAuSA-tg).
Thank you so much Travis for the links 🙂
But the argument you link to is for the resurrection, for which only textual evidence exists. Therefore, we need to apply textual criticism to determine if a resurrection is even in the text, and then we need to apply literary criticism to determine if the texts intended to convey fact or metaphor. Finally, we need to apply a little bit of logic to determine whether the events described in the text are likely to be true, or simply a misunderstanding on the part of a community that was already pretty far removed from the original eye-witnesses.
The writings of a community of believers about the magic of their founder is not particularly compelling evidence. We reject the same claims made about Pythagoras, Apollonius of Tyana, and others because we know that the “in-community” is too emotionally invested to be trusted to give an accurate account. If you think about the reasons why you reject all the magic claims about Pythagoras, you may realise why 4billion people reject the magic claims about Jesus.
And the fact is that there are things described in the New Testament that, if they really happened, would have had independent attestation. Things like the graves of Jerusalem opening up and the bodily resurrection of all those people, things like Jesus appearing to over 500 people, things like the raucous in the temple. Or, at the very least, one of these would have been mentioned in contemporary non-Christian writings.
The point was to show that Joseph of Arimathea was unlikely person to be included in the story if it was a made up. Remember, New Testament documents ought to be read just like any other Historical document. Biases are always present in any writings, a good Historian trys to go beyond them 🙂
Thank you so much! I’ve been studying the Historical Jesus for about a year now, and this was part of the study! This helps so much, and the sources….!!! Thank you!
Thank so much Nicholas and Appliedapologetics.
I have more sources if you would like.
In Christ Jesus,
Prayson
Wonderful job. Keep up the good work and Christ be with you:-)
Whatever. Go on and rewrite history and delude yourself. Your not a Christian, your a conspiracy theorist.
How am I conspiracy theorist, noreligion? 🙂
I am specifically talking about similarities in dying and resurrecting which is what you are trying to deny. Let me ask you, how close must a parallel be before a christian apologist would recognize it as such? A dying and rising savior such as those you mention that die seasonally (stay dead for six months) then rise is tons more impressive than one that only stays dead for three days (which was really 1 1/2 days). If the myth was dead for three days, then you would probably say their name wasn’t Jesus so they aren’t similar. As I said (and you agreed) the early church fathers (Justin Martyr and another whose name escapes me at the moment) claimed these myths were imitated by Satan in advance so why the need for modern Christians to deny them? You keep replying but never answer the only question I ask. Why is that?
But their is no dying and resurrection gods in other myths. The “we propound nothing different” by Justin Martyr is a misquote; They took the quote out of context. The quote comes from First Apology, read Chapter 21 and 22 and you will see that, Justin is not saying these gods are the same as Jesus, lived and died in similar ways, rather he is saying that even though they are both gods and are held highly by the people, he will prove Jesus is superior.
Resurrection in Judaism means transformation of a mortal body to immortal, an idea which is strange and goes against all other ancient religion because they believe the spirit was trapped in the corrupt body. Dying means freeing the spirit from its captivity. Taking the body back was unspeakable.
Ancient mythical religions could not keep up with a competing fast growing religion, thus they indeed intimated some Christian traditions. But this was after 100 A.D. The dying and raising gods in other religion came after Christianity to which Historian think it is probably because of the Christian influence.
Did I answer you question. If not please help me know how I can answer it.
Ack! The dying and rising god is considered to be a mythic archetype because it’s so common! They come from all over the world, and many pre-date Christianity. Wikipedia has a list of some dying/rising gods
Anyone can make claims, the problem is do they have the evidence to back their claims? Are their claims logically sound?
I find Copy-cat theory disturbing because none produce original or copy of original document to back their claims. I tried to trace down the sources, all I got is a quote of a quote of a quote of a German scholar whom give no information where if got his information.
It is true that the religions pre-date Jesus, but the dying and rising god in those religions started after Christianity. The reason I hold this is because I found no evidence of dying and rising gods before 100 A.D. If you found one before 100, please direct it me so I can evaluate it. 🙂
Osiris, Ishtar, Inanna, Baal… We also have myths from other parts of the world. The Aztecs and the Australians aborigines both had dying/rising heroes.
The problem is to produce evidence in what is claimed. I have not read Ishtar, Inanna and Baal, but I read Osiris and I yet to find evidence of dying and rising heroes in its myth.
Osiris dies and is brought back to life as lord of the Nile and pharaoh of the afterlife. In his depictions, he is always shown with green skin and wearing the bandages of a mummy. This is the central Osiris myth…
Osiris is brought back to the land of the dead. The Lord of the underworld. Calling this ressurection is reading Christian terms in to other religions. It is like calling 911, September 11. 🙂
Yes, you are correct in saying the early church fathers addressed it. They addressed it but did not deny it existed, if they were to deny it they never would have addressed it. However modern christians find some weird need to try and disprove the similarities. The Zeitgeist you mention seems to be popularized by the internet movie that uses the “work” of Acharya S. Her work is wrong and any respectable scholar will tell you that. Just because they are similar does not mean one was copied from the other. What I said in my first reply and what you seem to have glossed over is that christianity sprang up in a geographic area that was enveloped in many myths of the same type that are found in christianity. Taking all that into account, don’t you see how foolhardy it is to deny any similarity?
I am not denying that their are similarities in religions. I only denied the “forced” similarities namely virgin birth, crucifixion, 3rd resurrection e.t.c. Indeed there would be similarities in religion(“World view”) because they all try to answer the hard questions,example suffering, evil, where did the universal come from, is there afterlife, ethics and on. Forgive me if the article led you to believe that I am denying any similarities.
Why doesn’t it surprise me that you can’t understand or refuse to acknowledge the question. I’ll make it easier for you. The question is the first sentence that ends with a question mark.
Noreligion forgive me for my blindness. I did not fully get your question.
The early church fathers answered the false/spirit ideas of their ages(Zeitgeist), the same false/spirit ideas has been brought back not in Academia but pop-media to which many are falling victims. Thus we, Christians are required by our own faith to work so hard to disprove it(2 Cor 10:5, 1 Peter 3:15)
Please let me know if I tried to answer your question, and If I have fail, please do help me point where.
I do hope we could have a discussion full of love and respect toward each others position.
Thank you again.
Prayson
Question, if the early church fathers had to mention the prior myths and say they were “pre-forgeries” by satan (and they did say that in the second century), why do christians work so hard to disprove it? I am not saying christianity copied the myths but to claim the religious culture that pervaded in the geographic location of early christianity is just plain ignorant.
How so noreligion? I could not fully understand your position and question.
BTW: Thank you for the comment 🙂