It was already done. This dumbass won't respond.

Hmmm, for a group that calls itself the "Rational Response Squad" it sure is hard to get a response to a simple request.

Thinking perhaps the elusive Rook Hawkins had already posted something detailing some actual evidence (not assertions) about these "parallels" between Jesus and earlier gods on YouTube, I went searching for them.  I did find some other videos by Rook, including one where Sapient introduces Rook as "highly specialised and honed in ... ancient history and Biblical knowledge".  This, remember, is the same "highly specialised" Rook Hawkins who claims the canon of the Bible was fixed at the Council of Nicea and that the Arians didn't believe Jesus was divine: two blunders so elementary that they'd make the most muddle-headed first year undergraduate blush in shame.  So much for Rook's high degree of specialisation in ancient history.

Anyway, this 24-year old self-declared specialist didn't have any videos where he detailed these supposed parallels between Jesus and earlier gods.  But I did find this hilarious gem and this work of comic genius. It looks like the guys who made those two pastiches of laughable crap were more keen and presenting stuff they hadn't checked but desperately wanted to believe than they were on getting their facts straight.

Again - fundamentalists do that sort of crap.  We atheists are meant to be the smart ones.  Why are we letting this kind of dumb nonsense presented in our name go unchallenged? This garbage pseudo history just makes atheists look stupid.

A rational response from the "Rational Response Squad" on why similar sloppy errors are being propogated and endorsed here would be good.

Wow! I know Bart Ehrman. I must be a genius in biblical and historical studies. In fact, Rook does not have a degree in history. He is an intelligent man, but a degree goes a long way in terms of credibility.

I have not done a lot of research on Carrier, but in what I've found he makes some odd mistakes.

http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/rook_hawkins/the_jesus_mythicist_campaign/8202

Now, if Robert Price is a mythicist, I find that hilarious. He is in the Jesus Seminar. The Seminar tries to determine authrntic sayings of Jesus within gospel texts. I can only imagine what a debate in the Seminar would sound like with Price.

Crossan: "I find that this verse has eschatological undertones which reflects viewpoints of an early Christian community."

Funk: "This is true, however the verse also attempts to break religious boundaries, thus it could stem from an idea of Jesus."

Price: "Uh....Jesus never existed."

Crossan: "I agree with your point Dr. Funk, I think we should allow a grey designation."

Funk: "I second that Dominic."

Price: "Uh...yeah I still think that Jesus didn't exist."

Crossan: "Thank you Robert Price, your useless additions to the discussion are oh so helpful." 

I don’t think I mentioned my qualifications anywhere in any of my posts. Though I do mention in my sig that I’m an amateur who doesn’t pretend to be anything else. I certainly don’t pretend to be an “historian”, except in the loosest sense of the word – ie someone who studies history.

What your abusive reaction above may be responding to is where I pointed out that Jesus Mythers tend to be amateurs while professional historians – ie the ones who work in research and teaching positions in accredited universities and publish in peer reviewed publications – almost universally reject the Jesus Myth hypothesis as weak, ideologically-driven special pleading.

Being “good friends” with academics makes you some kind of expert?! On what planet does this happen? In that case, I’m an “expert” in geology, social work and corporate law.

Richard Carrier is an amateur who has pretty much the same level of qualifications as I do. The only publications he’s had in a peer reviewed academic publication are his articles on “Epicurus” etc in Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. He’s an amateur with solid qualifications and he’s certain worth reading in ways that hacks like Freke and Gandy or kooks like “Acharya S” are definitely not, but a professional scholar he ain’t.

Robert Price, on the other hand, is a professional scholar. A theologian rather than an historian, but at least a professional one. He’s also pretty much the lone ranger amongst scholars who takes the Jesus Myth seriously. You can also find professional scholars in science and medicine who don’t think smoking is bad for you. If you look hard enough, that is.

That’s nice, but this thread is about Mithras and the original poster’s distress call was to young Rook, hoping he’ll be able to answer our Christian pal about Jesus and pagan god parallels. I then asked if there were any proper analyses of this topic here, since “MattShizzle” asserted there was. And I don’t mean a rehash of the usual crap that makes weird assertions about Mithras “dying and rising from the dead” or being “given gifts by three kings” or other fantasy claims based on zero evidence cut and pasted from crap websites.

If you’d read my posts above before you started scolding me, you’d see I was asking to be directed to such discussions. I’ll ask again – where are they available?

Sorry, I just have old information about those topics – the stuff based on evidence. What I don’t have is any evidence to support the crap that is regularly asserted on this subject, such as the ones in those hilarious YouTube videos. That’s because the evidence for most of those claims doesn’t exist.

My earlier question still stands – why are people here supporting similar baseless claims? We don’t let fundies get away with garbage like that, so why stand by when atheists indulge in similar pseudo historical nonsense? Or even perpetuate this unscholarly crap? Aren’t we meant to be the smart, well-read ones?

Because I’m not sticking to the group-think party line of mindlessly accepting anything and everything that sticks it to Christianity? Sorry, but I don’t like intellectual dishonesty or sloppy scholarship regardless of whether it comes in a theistic or an atheistic wrapper. Fundamentalism makes people indulge in dumb thinking and accept crap arguments. That’s as true for atheistic fundamentalism as it is for the more prevalent theistic variety.

When people make statements like “Mithraism was the state religion of the Roman Empire” or “the Arians denied the divinity of Jesus” then they are flatly and completely WRONG, and the fact that they may be atheists doesn’t change the fact they are wrong for a second. Nor is that going stop me from slapping them in the head for being so sloppy and stupid, since they make all of us look dumb by their feeble errors.

Thanks – I had a bet with myself about how long it would take before someone tried to insinuate that I’m not an atheist. Please don’t be so boring.

I’ve made my reasons for rejecting the Jesus Myth hypothesis pretty clear in several of my posts. They hardly need any lengthy apologia, since they are the reasons the Jesus Myth remains a fringe idea and is generally rejected by professional scholars (apart from … well … Price and that’s about it):

(i) All of our sources, Christian or otherwise, say that he was an historical figure and none say, hint or in any way indicate that he wasn’t. This is despite the fact that this would be a powerful argument in the hands of early Christianity’s Jewish and pagan opponents. The idea that not only did the whole of Christianity somehow forget that Jesus had never existed, but that this bizarre, comprehensive mass amnesia afflicted everyone else as well stretches credulity past breaking point.

(ii) The Jesus Myth hypothesis can’t just be a possible or even a plausible alternative explanation – it has to explain the evidence better. Leaving aside the fact that most Jesus Mythers’ explanations as to who invented Jesus, when they did so and why are either (a) farcical or (b) totally absent, the stories we have about Jesus contain elements which were awkward for early Christianity and represent anomalies in the narratives.

If an historical Yeshua existed these anomalies are easily explained – they’re in the stories because they are historical, even if they were awkward. If Jesus didn’t exist, however, the Jesus Myth hypothesis needs to explain how these odd elements found their way into the story. Why, for example, invent a Jesus from Nazareth, of all places, and then tie yourselves in knots trying to explain how this Galilean was actually born in Bethlehem. Why not invent a Jesus from Bethlehem in the first place? Why the hell is Nazareth in there? Unless, of course, he did exist and he came from Nazareth.

When the Jesus Mythers either forget to even posit an explanation as to who invented Jesus, when, where and why or present explanations that involve vast leaps of credulity (like Doherty’s requirement that we believe in a whole branch of Christianity that exists nowhere outside of his contrived thesis), it’s hardly surprising they don’t convince anyone of any significance.

In my experience, when you have some amateurs with an ideological axe to grind on one side and a large number of professional scholars from a variety of standpoints on the other (in this case Christian, Jewish, agnostic and atheist), the smart money is on the professionals. This is the case with Creationists. It’s the case with Holocaust Deniers and it’s the case with the Jesus Myth.

Now who sounds like a pouty Christian teen whose fundie parade has been rained on?

[MOD EDIT: FIXED FORMATTING] 

It's a little hard to take your high-minded scolding about "attacks" and "ad hominems" seriously when your opening words to me were "you arrogant prick". How charming.

It's also a bit hard to know what to make of someone so hyper-sensitive and defensive that they mistake valid criticism for simple mean-spirited "attacks". I've made it very clear why I'm criticising Rook - the demonstrable historical errors in his material. And if I've used some sarcasm for rhetorical emphasis, then its been far milder than most of the sarcasm I (and most other atheists) use when pointing out similar clumsy errors made by Christian fundies.

We, quite rightly, don't let smug Christians get away with basic blunders, so why should Rook be given a free pass? Because he's one of us? That makes things worse - we're meant to be the smart ones who do our homework properly and who don't latch onto false ideas simply because they suit our point of view.

Terrific. Then since you're keen on checking out information from other sources, maybe you'd like to stop pretending that I'm simply some big meanie who's coming onto this board to shout "Rook is a poopyhead!" and go check the specific claims that I've criticised. See if you can find a source that supports the idea that the Council of Nicea set the canon of the Christian Bible in 325 AD. Or find me a source that supports the claim that the Arians denied Jesus' divinity.

If you can find sources that support these claims, then congratulations - you'll be the talk of the historical academic world and have a golden future as the renowed historian who discovered something everyone else has overlooked for the last 250 years or so. If (or, rather, when) you can't find any such sources, you might want to rethink the validity of my criticisms of Rook.

Are you seriously telling me this 24 year old who doesn't even have an undergraduate degree has discovered material that proves that the Arians, in fact, did deny the divinity of Jesus or that the Council of Nicea did, in fact, discuss the Canon? Because that's what would be required for Rook to be right on these two points and for every other historian on the planet to be wrong.

If that's the case, then that is going to be one cracker of a book. Somehow I suspect, however, that this is not the case at all, and Rook just made a couple of rather basic mistakes.

Where you seem to be is still labouring under the misapprehension that criticisms are "attacks" and that my criticisms are just my "opinions" rather than based on fact. The Arians did believe Jesus was divine. That's just an historical fact - not my "opinion". The Canon was not even discussed at Nicea, let alone decided there. That's just an historical fact - not my "opinion". If pointing these facts out hurts your feelings, then I'm afraid that's bad luck. We would jump all over any Christian fundie who made errors like that, so why let an atheist get away with it? Especially considering it seems people here are trusting this guy as a reliable source of information and analysis.

One from Galilee, apparently. From Nazareth, to be exact. That's what the later stories indicate, and this seems to be one part of those stories which is reliably historical. And we can say that because the idea of a Messiah from Nazareth was a problem for the early Christians, since the Messiah was meant to be Bethlehem and his later followers had to work very hard to explain his Galilean origins away. This indicates that they were something they simply couldn't deny. And it also indicates that he was not a Messiah that someone just made up, since the Nazareth element is incongruous.

None that we know of. Claiming to be the Messiah or having this claimed about you was a pretty big claim. As far as we know, Jesus was the only definite such claimant in the First Century and we have to wait until Simon bar Kokhba in the Second Century before we get another person who we can definitely say was such a claimant. Even with Jesus it's highly unclear whether he made this claim about himself, whether others made it about it in his lifetime or it the claim wasn't made until after his execution.

Thank you. And the Carrier shows are the ones that deal with Mithras and the pagan parallels? That's what this thread is actually about, after all.

 <edit> Hang on - that link is asking me to fork over $15 to listen to those shows.  I could buy a decent book for that kind of money, why would I pay that to listen to a guy with an MA talk to a couple of twentysomething Jesus Mythers?  Get real. </edit>

Er, yup.

Reading his posts I suspect it's simply going to be a popularisation of Doherty's thesis. Unless, of course, he has discovered new material that shows the Canon was set at Nicea and that the Arians denied that Jesus was divine. If so, then it'll be the most astonishing work of groundbreaking, seminal research of the last century or so. But somehow I don't think so.

As an Australian, I have a wry sense of humour about most things, including myself and my advancing years. But I realise that many people here are both young and American and so tend miss dry irony. I've now put "Wise Old Atheist" in inverted commas/quote marks. I hope that makes the tone a little clearer.

The parallels I have heard with most credibility are:

1.- The "eucharist" of Osiris god of grain. His followers would eat his body, i.e. bread, and blood, i.e.  beer. Doing this would give his followers eternal life after death. Originally they believed Osiris was responsible for the revival of vegetation in the spring. This later mutated into the belief that he could also give life after death. It always seemed so strange to me when Jesus said all that about his body and his blood being bread and wine. But it does make sense in the more ancient cult of Osiris. He's the god of grain. Believing his body is made of bread and his blood is beer (made of grain too) is perfectly understandable. Also, we know the egyptians believed that you could aquire the powers of gods by eating them. They had legends of gods killing other gods and thus aquiring their powers.

2.- The Hilaria of Attis. Where his followers after having buried the god in a cave and having wept for his death would rejoice on the third day for his resurection. This is attested explicitly in the 3rd century only I think. But we know that they celebrated a 'Holy week' during the time of Claudius where he added one more day of celebration. I've heard apologists say that since it is only mentioned later explicitly that it was copied from Christianity. This is hard for me to believe because we know their celebrations included mourning for the god before Christianity (like for Tammuz whose followers are even mentioned in the bible as weeping for him) and we know that these cults had their origins on the revival of vegetation during spring time so why would the not celebrate the revival too which was the whole point of the cults. Robert Price mentions pottery depicting Attis in his resurected pose (dancing) which has been dated to the 1st century BC I believe. Also, the early church fathers do not accuse the pagans for copying this from them when they mention the celebration in the 3rd century.

I agree all the other paralles I have heard do not hold much water after close examination but the 2 above seem more solid to me. I am a complete amateur at this so i may well be wrong about the above parallels too. If you have better information please let me know.

Thanks.