Reimagining a story is a current Hollywoodism. For those of the British persuasion you have likely seen Jekyll as the reimagining of the classic story. But if you think about it both are reimaginings of the Golem story. And if you are a god, the early chapters of Genesis tell the story of a creation gone wrong. That creation is people. Be careful what you wish for. What you do for one reason will take on a life of its own. Eventually you can generalize it enough to show there is really only one story told of infinite diversity in infinite combinations. (The Star Trek writer did not invent the IDIC.)

There are occasional attempts to show a comparison between Jesus and one other god mythology. Problem is, it is not that simple. If all we had were the Disney version of Cinderella and one of the Chinese versions we could as easily write it off to coincidence. It is only when looking at a half dozen of them that we see the common thread which creates this type of story.

Here is a brief outline of what I may some day expand to ten times this size with boring detail and numbing footnotes and really not say any more than this.

This should be enough to show the commonality of the god stories in their mixing and matching of common theme elements into a story. It is enough to show the commonality of names in the arc from Ishtar to Aphrodite as well as their very similar roles in the stories.

In one paragraph I mix many of the names to show they are interchangable and still tell the same story. If you have a familiarity with the individual stories you will most likely find you have most likely been associating the wrong names with the story you are thinking off. They are that close in theme. They can only be separated in details.

Without further ado ...

    The following names are applied to local variations of a single
goddess, Ishtar, Isis, Ashara, Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus. These are the same not just by name similarity but because the fundamental myths about them are variations upon the same story. The same applies to the male gods.

    The following names are applied to local variations of a single god, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Tammuz, Mithras and as we shall see, Jesus. Under the first five names legend attributes him great physical beauty and hunting skills. Jesus by tradition had perfect physical form and was a fisher of men.

    In the Hebrew bible the first commandment reads "I Adoni am your god." Adoni is the word translated as lord in the Christian version. In Greek Adon is lord. The oldest known version of the Old Testament is the Greek Septuagint.  When the Hebrew version was created it kept the Adoni as the name of the god for some of the books although it generally defaults to Yahweh Elohim. Yahweh is translated into lord in English and Elohim as the singular god although it clearly has the plural suffix, im.

    Yahweh and Ashara are a pair of deities found in the records of Ugarit. An inscription referring to Yahweh and his Ashara has been found in bibleland.

    Adonis is the husband of Venus. In this imagining Adonis is the son of King Cinyras and either the king's daughter, Myrrha, or Astarte herself. Astarte as Venus falls in love with Adonis. Mars becomes jealous of Adonis, turns into a boar and kills Adonis. Venus travels to Hades (he descended in to hell) to retrieve him. Pluto's wife is also in love with him and they agree each will have him half the year. Venus gets the summer so this is celebrated on the Vernal Equinox as is Easter, the name Easter coming from Ishtar.

    It takes Astarte two days to broker this deal so he can be
resurrected. This explains the reason Christians insist upon three days in the tomb -- from old testament prophecy -- while having only two calendar days between death and resurrection which is from existing religious custom.

    The Egyptian imagining of this story has Amun, Isis, Osiris and Set as the main players. Amun is the chief god of Egypt who made the first men out of clay. He was portrayed with the head of a ram, thus the Shofar horn. He came before the other gods as does Adoni in the first commandment.

    Plutarch, in his Lives ("Alcibiades," XVIII), speaking of the
sailing of the Greek fleet for Syracuse in the year 415 B.C., says: "It was an evil omen that the festival of Adonis fell in those days. Numbers of women bore images, like dead bodies, and held mock funerals; and they mourned and chanted the solemn hymns."

    Thus the festival of Adonis was well established at least four
centuries before the earliest incarnation of the Jesus story. The story itself is much older. The Egyptian imagining is found on much older wall inscriptions.

    Most Christians accept the doctrine of the Trinity which holds
Yahweh and Jesus are the exactly the same god for this reason. One wonders if Ishtar is the Holy Spirit which connects the two names -- an eternal love triangle so to speak. The Holy Spirit is depicted as a dove. Ashara's symbol was primarily the tree but also the dove.

    The name Easter comes from the goddess Ishtar the wife of Adonis under the name of Attis. This is a vernal equinox celebration.

    BYT YHWH and BYT STRT both refer to buildings in Jerusalem. They are translated as Temple of Yahweh, YaHWeH, and Temple of Astarte, aSTaRTe. Idols of Astarte and of the divine pair, Astarte and Yahweh, are found at all levels in Jerusalem and around Judea. They abruptly stop appearing in Jerusalem after Judeans (Iodiminae, commonly translated as Jews in English)
are forbidden to enter Jerusalem by Hadrian.

    It is reported her temple there had eight sides suggesting the grand mosque on the so-called temple mount was built on the foundation of her temple. Or perhaps it was merely renovated.

    The Christian story of Jesus is simply another imagining of the common tale.  Consider it a puritanical version leaving out the explicit sex.

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    Spare the rod and spoil the child.
    Spare the flail and spoil the child.
    Thy flail and thy staff do comfort me.

Image of King of Egypt with crossed arms and symbols.

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    Purim is a classic Cinderella tale which comes in many forms some of which are barely recognizable from the Disney version. Esther, a variation on Ishtar from which we get Easter, is set in the last of the known civilized world to the east where both the sun and Venus/Ishtar also rise.

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    Far from being devoid of Vernal Equinox celebrations, the prophet Mohamed was born close enough to it in some calendar that it does not matter. The odd thing is male rather than female. Likely it replaced the birth of some female deity.

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    The story of Job is a dialog between Amun/Yahweh and Ra/Lucifer.

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    Angels, aka messengers, are depicted as having wings as the ancient gods used birds as messengers. The most commonly used bird was an owl, a bird that appears to be standing upright when it perches. This is why angels are depicted as having wings.

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    Powerful rulers claimed to be gods in those days which seems
incongruous to us with our idea of God. But people did not  expect much from any particular god in the old days.

    The claim to being a god was most commonly base upon the power of life and death. The gods sent a angels, messengers, of death. Kings ordered their messengers to kill. Also gods did not bring the dead back to life so neither was that a requirement for kings. Similarly gods did not bring inanimate objects to life so that was no expected of kings. Each god had different powers (like the X-Men) and most were simply influential without the power to force so a king did not have to do more than influence.

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    The Apis Bull of Egypt was selected as one being completely black except of a single white mark between its horns. It was not sacrificed and was connected with the patron god of Memphis.

    Jews connect a heifer with the arrival of their Messiah. It must be completely red. It is intended for sacrifice. It is possibly connected with the patron god of Jerusalem.

    The kings of Egypt were considered gods. The mothers of the kings were revered as the mothers of gods.

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