WAS JESUS A REAL PERSON? - PART NINE

                                          WAS JESUS A REAL                PERSON?

      PART NINE

        (copied from 
         Y-Jesus.com)


Myth Versus Reality

Whereas mythical gods are depicted as super heroes, living out human fantasies and lusts, the Gospels portray Christ as a man of  humility, compassion, and impeccable moral character. His followers present Him as a Real Person for Whom they willingly gave their lives.

The non-Christian scientist, Albert Einstein, stated, "No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His Presence pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life .......  No man can deny the fact that Jesus existed, nor that His sayings are beautiful."

Is it possible, Jesus' death and resurrection was plagiarised from these myths?  Their case against Jesus was presented in the You Tube movie Zeitgeist, where author Peter Joseph boldly claims,

"
The reality is Jesus was ...   a mythical figure ....
Christianity, along with all other theistic belief systems is the fraud of the age.

"

As one compares the Jesus of the Gospels with the  gods of mythology, a distinction becomes obvious. In contrast to the reality of Jesus revealed in the Gospels, accounts of mythological gods depict unrealistic gods with elements of fantasy. 

*  Mithra was supposedly born out of a rock.
*  Horus was depicted with the head of a falcon.
*  Bacchus, Hercules and others were flown to
      heaven on the horse Pegasus. 
*  Osiris was killed, chopped up into 14 pieces 
     and reassembled by his wife Isis, and brought         back to life.

But could Christianity have copied  Jesus' death and resurrection from these myths ?

His followers didn't think so. They willingly gave  their lives, proclaiming that the account of Jesus' Resurrection was true. (See Did Jesus Rise From The Dead).

Furthermore, "accounts of a dying and rising god, that somewhat parallel the story of Jesus' Resurrection appeared at least 100 years after the reports of Jesus' Resurrection. "

In other words, accounts of  Horus, Osiris and  Mithra dying and rising from the dead were not in their original mythologies, but were added after the Gospel accounts of Jesus were written. 

T.N.D. Mettinger, professor at Lund  University writes : "The consensus among modern scholars
- nearly universal - that there were no dying and rising gods that preceded Christianity. They all post dated the first century. "

According to most historians there really are no true parallels between any of these mythical gods and Jesus Christ. However, as C.S. Lewis observes, there are some common themes that speak to man's desire for immortality. 

Lewis recounts a conversation he had with 
J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  "The story of Christ, " said Tolkien, "  is simply a true myth : a myth ........  with this tremendous difference that it really happened."

 New Testament scholar
F.F. Bruce, concludes:
"Some writers may toy with the fancy of a Christ-myth, but they do not do so on the grounds of historical evidence.
The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic  for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar.   It is not historians who propagate the 
"Christ-myth" theories..


 next post 31st August