The pagan "copy-cat" theory is not promoted by scholars, but by atheists who are not concerned with objective historicity, but with their agenda. These links shread their arguments.

http://www.christiancadre.org/ topics/historicaljesus.html

http://www.bede.org.uk/price8. htm

 Several scholars are now rising to take a stand against all the lies, deceit and false propaganda that is running rampant on atheist internet sites. Go to the scholars, not the internet for the truth about the historical Christ. The internet is full of non-historians and lies.

Lee Strobel has consulted with the worlds leading scholars on the historical Jesus topic. Specifically, the atheist claim that Christianity borrowed from paganism. THESE ARE ALL LIES. And these scholars prove it. Read his new book :

The Case for the Real Jesus.

http://www.leestrobel.com/info_TCFTRJ.php

It deals specifically with the pagan "copy-cat" theory. And shreads it.

Holy projection, Batman!

You made this type of point to me at the convention. I agree, you cant simplify one story coming directly from a prior culture. BUT, humans dont exist in a vacuum.

There is nothing new under the sun, so the saying goes. The stories told by the Christians were told by earlyer cultures with different details. But motifs and concepts existed throughout polytheism and early monotheism. And spread and changed and morphed into somehting with different details, but still having a core motif.

The thiest in this thread makes a bad argument, "You are wrong about the parralles" as being proof that the magical claims in the bible are possible.

Pointing out an error of such only means that the person is wrong ON THAT GIVEN ISSUE. But it does not default to hocus pocus being possible.

CHALLENGING THE VERDICT: A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ by Earl Doherty pretty much tears Lee Strobel's theory to shreds.

http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/CTVExcerptsIntro.htm 

Acharya has an entire chapter in "Suns of God" entitled "Krishna's Birthdate" that explores this issue. "Suns of God" addresses the criticisms of "Christ Conspiracy".

RandallLord "she repeats many errors made by previous authors without checking her referances"

- Folks apparently aren't aware of where this is coming from - Acharya actually did research where Kersey Graves and others, were getting their info. Nobody else is willing to do this as it is a thankless job. Acharya mentions Kersey Graves only 7 times in "Christ Conspiracy". In "Suns of God" she mentions him only in order to discuss the fracas surrounding his credibility. She does NOT rely on Graves at all in SOG.

I see a lot of false assumptions and even vicious lies thrown her way - she deserves much better. 

Enjoy the "Acharya's Frequently Asked Questions" section of her forum - http://forums.truthbeknown.com/index.php?sid=d729a5bf95b57043edea9a31d8472020

; 

I have some trouble with Acharya's credibility: before I even get past her introduction I find her talking about Marx, Lenin and Trotsky being Jewish...ignoring that they were all committed atheists (even according to Christopher Hitchens, p. 273 of GING)...and passing on the vicious canard that Hitler was allegedly Jewish.

If she is that loose in her historical referencing with events of the past century, I am not sure how much time it is worth spending on her other material.

Like I said, if she addresses these issues so carelessly in her introduction, I am not convinced its worth the time to spend on her other material; your contention that there is no consensus on whether Hitler was Jewish or not indicates you don't know that much about this anyway...there is a consensus.  I know of no mainstream historian who supports the contention that Hitler was Jewish.

Even Robert Price originally pointed out the extreme degree to which she engages in unwarranted speculation.

Who needs it? She is not one of mine.

doublepost

doublepost

Acharya and Bob did have their differences at first, but they are now friends.  Even I can see some people do not have a clue as to what they are talking about and it's really sad. And actually, the Pagans did NOT copy off the Christians.  It was the other way around, the Christians took from the pagans and called it theirs.

Ad hominem attacks are really quite cheap. They only serve to reflect badly on their author and they are no substitue for a cogent argument.

You're welcome. I was making a couple of observations.

First I agree, that Acharya is intellectually sloppy, or at least she was originally.  I think Bob Price helped her overcome a lot of these issues.  Even still, I would not recommend her books.  There are other books I would recommend before hers which are more realistic, practical and sound.  For example, in one of her books she calls Plato divine and says he was born of a virgin.  This is just silly.  Not only is it a concept derived mainly from Muslim Neoplatonists hundreds of years after Christianity has become popular, it was also something that we have evidence to contradict, especially from the very writings of contemporaries and those who would write about him shortly after.  This is just one example of the many which I could discuss. 

That doesn't mean I don't respect her as a person, and I think she is great, but there is too much of this New Age-Tarrot parroting that seems to really depress me about her work, and it's simply too unrealistic for me to buy into.  It is like the movie Zeitgeist, it's a good concept, well done, but is completely not accurate historically or theologically.  Hands down, the movie was horrendously attrocious when it came to historical matters, but was produced in a great way.  I would criticize the movie and Acharya on their research.  I don't think she is a bad person. 

Off hand, I do not recall where I read it in her books, or which one it was.  I no longer have them.  I do know I also saw it on her website. http://www.truthbeknown.com/sunsofgod.htm

 She gives a list of Gods under the heading, "The list of pre-Christian gods, heroes, kings and queens who were said to have been born of a virgin includes the following..."  Including in this list she makes the claim that Plato was called "the Divine" and born of Jupitor (and a virgin), and weirdly enough, Julius Caesar...which is really preposterous.  

LOL, Jiggs you simply refuse to accept the obvious - if Dr. Price stood behind that review it would still be up but, it isn't. He has since written a positive review of "Suns of God" and he wrote the foreword to her latest book - what part of that can you not comprehend? As I've made categorically clear like 4 times for you so far, the old Price review has become irrelevant and obsolete. Make the necessary adjustments and get over it.

You have nothing to offer here except ad homs and lies as it is clear you haven't even read her work beyond the intro.

I informed you that Dawkins said similar things as she did in her intro but not a peep out of you. Do I detect sexism? It's okay when Dawkins says it but not Acharya?

"Ad hominem attacks are really quite cheap. They only serve to reflect badly on their author and they are no substitue for a cogent argument."

- Strange that someone points out what is blatantly obvious to most everyone else and gets repremanded for it here. Humm?

"Acharya is intellectually sloppy, or at least she was originally. I think Bob Price helped her overcome a lot of these issues. "

- This is simply not accurate read "Suns of God" and try to tell me it's sloppy or not scholarly. Price didn't help her overcome squat. This is a false assumption. The comment about "New Age-Tarrot parroting" is another false assumption which has been addressed in her F.A.Q.
http://forums.truthbeknown.com/index.php?sid=d729a5bf95b57043edea9a31d8472020

"Zeitgeist, it's a good concept, well done, but is completely not accurate historically or theologically."

- Please explain. Or should I start a new thread for this topic? "Zeitgeist" part 1 video based on Acharya's work (starts @ 9:45-35. Acharya has nothing to do with parts 2 & 3)
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com

Good work on the Plato topic Mriana. It turns out to be yet another straw man.

You should have checked them. There is not much on the subject at all.  Plutarch, I believe, was the first one who made the claims concerning Plato being Divine, but he made that around the first century CE, and seems to be to not be the view of anybody contemporaneus with Plato. I say this because we know of Plato's father and mother - we have their names! IN the Gnostic literature link you gave, they say that Speusippus said Plato was divine, but how is that when we HAVE no literature from him? Speusippus was only mentioned a few times in Aristotle, and not ever quoted, yet he does tell us he was married to Plato's sister, who would have known his parents.

The Penn article does not give us any hint where that information came from, not textual data to back it up. That bothers me. I want to see some translation or even transliterated Greek from a document where it says Plato was divine. This is just sloppy scholarship as far as I'm concerned, and should not be taken seriously.

That wasn't the point.  If you did more research on the subject you might find the answers to your questions.  I wasn't trying to do research for you, I was trying to show that it was not a completely arbitary statement.  The rest is up to you to find if you really want to find out what it's all about.Or you can just dismiss them if you like, but you maybe missing something worth while.  Sloppy scholarship or not, it does show there maybe something there for the inquirying mind to research.

I did not claim anything.  I just said there maybe something to research.  As for him not having left any writings, does The Republic ring a bell?I don't think it will solve the puzzle or your doubts, but there are several articles by Plato here, many talking about Zeus.  Even the Republic speaks of Zeus:  http://www.philosophyarchive.com/person.php?philosopher=Plato&era=400BC-301BC

BTW, to say "We have their names" meaning the parents' names is a bit proposterous, given that we have the names of Jesus's parents too: Mary and Jesus.  Yet the pagan birth story says Mary had an immaculate conception and God is Jesus's father.  However, we have two different geneologies- one in Matthew and the other in Luke.  Both are Joseph's geneologies, if you read closely.So, whether or not there is a story about Plato being the son of Zeus or not, the argument that we have the names of Plato's parents is superfulous, since many mythical god/man stories have two earthly parents and then a God father.

Well your website doesn't say much about you, so no, but your website could be a work in progress.  You're not Bob Price, that is for sure.

I prefer, besides Price and Acharya, Karen Armstrong, Robert Funk, Joseph Hoffmann, John Shelby Spong, and others like them.  They've been on the Jesus Seminar and some maybe doing the Jesus Project, except Funk because he's dead now and Achary has never done Westar.IMO, Plato is superfulous, esp if you examine Krishna, which I have and am.  Horus is also another one to examine too IMO.

I'm taking the Hindu class now.  According to our textbook by Gavin Flood, the Aryans went through what we know as the Middle East to the Indus and eventually back again.  Now I have a few problems with Flood's timeline, dating, and alike, but that's OK.  It was all long before the Christ myth was created.I also noticed in Bhagavad Gita the "I am's" and asked Bob about it and he confirmed that Moses and the Jesus myth were midrashes of the 9th and 10th teachings, not to mention in the 11th teaching Krishna is Vishnu incarnate (just as Jesus is God incarnate) he also confirmed, as I said in a previous post.  You can hear my question and his response to it on his Bible Geek Podcast from last Sunday. As for Plato, I'm not too worried about it.  I see religious and mythical texts as literature and see the Jesus story as no more true than John Jakes' North and South.  So, she associates a mythical story about Plato with Jesus.  Big deal.  It's just one more story which may or may not pan out like Horus, Krishna, and Mithra.  Now if I follow up on it when I have the time, that's my business of course.  Currently I'm too busy with classes to follow up anymore than what I have.  However, Plato has not been buried in myth, so we know what's real about him and what is a story ie Lincoln in Jakes saga was real as well as the places.  However, with Jesus and as Bob is so well known for saying, "If there ever was a historical Jesus, he's so buried in myth that we'll never find him."  While the towns may have been real in the Jesus myth, Jesus was not.

I see, so now PENN STATE is engaging in "sloppy research" because they've got an article on their website - totally independent of Acharya's work - that discusses Plato's divine status. Rook couldn't admit that HE was wrong about Acharya's research being "sloppy" or "silly," and that Acharya herself didn't make it up or that it didn't come from the nebulous "Muslim Neoplatonists." BTW, Rook, do you speak Arabic? Do you have those original texts in your possession?

It should also be pointed out that Bob Price had NOTHING to do with Acharya's book "Suns of God", except that she showed his criticisms of her work to be ERRONEOUS. Bob Price should absolutely NOT be allowed to have any credit concerning her work in Suns, which, in fact, BACKS UP her supposedly "sloppy" earlier work.

Rook, I can't help but notice that when you found yourself faced with Speusippus, you began spluttering a bunch of sophistic hooey, rather than admit you were WRONG about the "Muslim apologists" originating the claim long after the Christian era. This doesn't look good Rook.

You may choose to humble yourself just a tad. You're not proving yourself clever here. Rather, conceited about your own knowledge, not anything about Acharya's work with your nitpicking and ostentatious display of your own erudition. This is called "pretentiousness".

In the first place, in the online excerpt from Acharya's book that Rook is citing, she relates the claim that Plato was called "the divine" and the "son of Apollo," not Jupiter, as Rook claims, so Rook immediately demonstrates his inability to get facts straight.

Secondly, he calls the claim "silly," then he validates that people long prior to Acharya had made the claim, i.e., some "Muslim Neoplatonists," as if "Muslim Platonists" suddenly made it up at some point long after the Christian era. They did not, so Rook is wrong.

Indeed, when we examine the issue - by actually reading Acharya's book (which nobody here has done), rather than scanning excerpts online and then pretending we're experts on Acharya's work - we discover that Plato was called "the divine" and "son of Apollo" in the works of the Greek philosopher, Speusippus (4th cent. BCE). The following statement may be found on p. 219 of "Suns of God", in the list of pre-Christian virgin-born mortals:

Quote:
Plato, "the divine" and "son of Apollo," according Greek philosopher Speusippus (4th cent. BCE).


For more on Speusippus, see this book here, which Acharya had nothing to do with writing:

http://tinyurl.com/2erplo

And the quote there:

Quote:
To begin with, in F Ia Speussipus told a specific story about Plato's divine parentage, a story that was current in Athens...

What was the story of Plato's divine parentage? That he was the son of Apollo. Hence, CURRENT IN ATHENS during the 4th century BCE was the story that Plato was divine and the son of Apollo.

As we can see, it is not Acharya who is "silly".

The contemptuous remark regarding Julius Caesar can be shown in like manner to be born out of your ignorance, rather than Acharya's. All Caesars were considered to be divine-born sons of God, and Julius Caesar was said to have been born out of the side of his mother; hence, the term "Caesarian section." This is not to say that Caesar WAS born through the side of his mother but that the myth about his miraculous birth is very old and spawned this procedure named after him, for the very reason that it was believed he had been born in this manner. This is the same manner in which Buddha was said to have been born, as related by St. Jerome, who calls Buddha's mother a "virgin." In Against Jovianus (I, 42-43), Jerome remarks:

Quote:
"42. To come to the Gymnosophists of India, the opinion is authoritatively handed down that Budda, the founder of their religion, had his birth through the side of a virgin. And we need not wonder at this in the case of Barbarians when cultured Greece supposed that Minerva at her birth sprang from the head of Jove, and Father Bacchus from his thigh. Speusippus also, Plato's nephew, and Clearchus in his eulogy of Plato, and Anaxelides in the second book of his philosophy, relates that Perictione, the mother of Plato, was violated by an apparition of Apollo, and they agree in thinking that the prince of wisdom was born of a virgin. Timæus writes that the virgin daughter of Pythagoras was at the head of a band of virgins, and instructed them in chastity. Diodorus, the disciple of Socrates, is said to have had five daughters skilled in dialectics and distinguished for chastity, of whom a full account is given by Philo the master of Carneades. And mighty Rome cannot taunt us as though we had invented the story of the birth of our Lord and Saviour from a virgin; for the Romans believe that the founders of their city and race were the offspring of the virgin Ilia and of Mars."

"43. Let these allusions to the virgins of the world, brief and hastily gathered from many histories, now suffice."

Note here too that Jerome says Speusippus specifically names Plato as virgin-born. BTW, that last quote from Jerome can be found in Acharya's "Who Was Jesus?" too, - precious, isn't it?

The only thing "preposterous" here is the arrogance with which you express yourself.

* It may be wise to actually read her work BEFORE making assumptions. Rook you're clearly not qualified to make commentary on Acharya's work as you've admitted you have not studied it. Your glaring ignorance on mythology is what I've been trying to point out to you is what you are missing here and one thing of many, where Acharya has experience and can help. Thank you for helping me make that argument here. Will you have the integrity and character to admit that you made a mistake and jumped the gun?

I'm very disappointed Rook. You must realize that I'm on your side here with the Jesus myth position but your stance and charges against Acharya are false as demonstrated above. Please make the necessary adjustments.

Freethinkaluva, you're not too bright. I think perhaps you feel the more words you write the more intelligent people will think you are. In fact, not a single thing you said is accurate. But, there is something I find amusing. While calling me ignorant, you tried to suggest that Caesar was born of a virgin and the son of God...but where are you getting this information from?

Our contemporary accounts of him, including the ones he himself had written, make no mention of this fact. And Suetonius, a century later, only writes of the instance of which Caesar claimed to be descended from kings and Gods, not that he was born of a union between God and his mother:

"When quaestor [67 B.C.], he pronounced the customary orations from the rostra in praise of his aunt Julia and his wife Cornelia, who had both died. And in the eulogy of his aunt he spoke in the following terms of her paternal and maternal ancestry and that of his own father: 'The family of my aunt Julia is descended by her mother from the kings, and on her father's side is akin to the immortal Gods; for the Marcii Reges (her mother's family name) go back to Ancus Marcius, and the Julii, the family of which ours is a branch, to Venus. Our stock therefore has at once the sanctity of kings, whose power is supreme among mortal men, and the claim to reverence which attaches to the Gods, who hold sway over kings themselves.'" (Suetonius, Lives of the Twleve Caesars, Iulius Caesar VI:I)

We also know that Caesar lost his father early on during his teens, "IN the course of his sixteenth year [c. 85/84 B.C.] he lost his father." (Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Iulius Caesar I:I) Caesar became deified later on, yes, as a living God. That does not make Caesar the son of God, nor does it mean he had a virgin birth. These are stories that don't apply to Julius Caesar, nor to Plato, yet Acharya S has apparently either made up or sloppily read somewhere about, and cited without further research. You can also consult The Oxford Classical Dictionary and the Cambridge Dictionary of Classical Civilization for authoritative data on this very subject. Also Cicero and Sullust will provide you adequate information on Caesar as they are contemporaneous.

On an additional note you claimed all Caesars were deified, and this is false. Only Julius and Augustus were deified. After Augustus, none of the other Caesars were considered to be Gods. You can consult any of the classical historians for that information, but of Tacitus and Suetonius, Suetonius is the best source as he is generally considered to be the less anecdotal of the two, not to mention his Lives of the Twelve Caesars really covers everything.

Also, I never said Penn State was sloppy, although just because they are a college does not mean they are perfect (your naivety really shines here). All I said was that they do not back up their data. All this could have been avoided, had Acharya done her job, as a scholar, and appropriately cited information regarding this issue. She didn't, this it is sloppy.

Your growing arrogance about Acharya S is really showing through, and your inability to do actual research seems to be continuing along a path of hopelessness. You have done nothing since you've been here but waste my time, and waste your own time by ignoring the reality of the situation. I have shown now in this thread and the earlier one that Acharya is sloppy. That isn't a personal attack against her, but her scholarship, which is crap. There are far better scholars out there who have done better research who are worth reading. You simply are too stubborn to give a damn, and that I think more than anything is annoying. You are such a fanboy, and yet, so inept at realizing how much you are hinged on her. It's intellectual laziness at its worst, and you are suffering from a severe case of it.