Question:

I am getting hit with this subject more often. The bassist in my band who I basically live with when on tour sent me this video after a long talk we had on the tour bus. There are a lot of claims with no evidence to back it up however I think it’d be great when you have to time to dissect this and refute it. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gELzYupzXs&feature=related

Response:

My response is the same.  All these claims are refuted, either at my web site or in the debate between Douglas Jacoby and Robert Price (www.ipibook.com).   I want to challenge you to do the research from the references I already gave you.   I believe I have already addressed these questions sufficiently, except that you need to be willing to do the little bit of research required.

I will not refute all of the claims in this rather deceitful video, but let me mention just a couple of things.

For example, he says that Jesus was born on Dec. 25^th, which, according to this guy, is a clear rip-off of these other god-man myth figures.  There is a problem with this, which is that Jesus was definitely NOT born on Dec. 25^th.   The Bible certainly did not steal this from other myths, as it is not even a biblical claim.  When Jesus was born, the shepherds were out in their fields, which would not happen in Judea in December.  More likely, it was either in Sept-Oct. or March-May.  No one knows the date of Jesus’ birth.

They he does something rather sneaky—actually rather deceitful.   He talks about the three days before the sun begins to turn south as the cosmological reason for the claim of resurrection on the third day.   First of all, if the sun is still, it is still Dec 20-22, not Dec 21-24.  Second of all, the Southern Cross is not even visible in the winter in the northern hemisphere.  The idea that the Jesus story of resurrection was created as an astrological symbol is really quite ridiculous, first of all, because the symbol would not even have made sense to a Palestinian in the first century, and second of all, because there is absolutely no evidence that the church believed his birth was on Dec. 25^th for three centuries.  By this time, the supposed “myth” of the resurrection on the third day had been in place for three hundred years.  This argument makes no sense and, for the person who is composing it, it requires a purposeful deceit. 

Next, the supposed parallels are a mixture of clear out-and-out lies and parallels which exist because other religions borrowed  from Christianity, not the reverse.   You can do as much research as you like, but it is simply NOT TRUE that Attis was claimed to have died and been resurrected on the third day.   I challenge anyone to find an ancient source which says this.  There is none.   Period.  Neither is it true that believers in Horus believed that he died and was resurrected on the third day.  This is a bold-faced lie!!!   If you look into the actual claims and beliefs about Mithra, Krishna, Horus and the like, you will find in each case perhaps one or two claims from this video which are true.  For example, it is true that some Mithraites believed that he had 12 followers.  The problem with this as refutation of the Jesus story is that the idea of 12 disciples of Mithra came AFTER the gospels were written.   This religion (Mithraism)  was begun after Christianity.  The Dec. 25 birth dates (which is a lie in several cases, but is an actual claim in others) was clearly applied to Mithra or others AFTER it was already assigned to Jesus.   The oldest sources we have on Dionysus or Krishna come from hundreds of years after Jesus.  By the fourth century, Jesus was the dominant religious figure in the Mediterranean and the Near East.   Believers in other religions borrowed from Christianity.  NOT vice versa.   This is the source of the tiny fraction of actual parallels, not the other way around.   Again, a large majority of the claimed parallels are plain old ordinary lies.   The small proportion which can actually be found in ancient sources on these mythological figures comes from after the Christian age, and was almost certainly borrowed from Christianity and not vice versa.

The most important point:   Jesus was a real person.  We know where he was born, where he lived, where and how he died, the names of his father, mother, brothers and more than 25 of his closest followers.   The reason the New Testament says he had twelve apostles is that he had twelve apostles.  We know their names and some of them are mentioned in non-Christian sources.  The reason the Bible says that he was raised on the third day is because he was raised on the third day.    The reason that the scriptures claim that Jesus was born from a virgin is because Mary told people she was a virgin when Jesus was born.  The gospel writers were not creative myth-robbers, making up a myth by using scraps of other myths.  They were real people who really observed the events or heard about them from eye-witnesses, and most of them were killed for believing in these things.   The idea that they created a myth about a person who never lived is absolutely ludicrous.   Let us contrast this with Mithra, Krishna, Dionysis, Horus, etc….   These are not real people.  We do not know where they lived, we do not know when they died.   We know absolutely nothing about them as historical figures because they are NOT historical figures.   They are myths.  They are not historical figures, as even the believers in these religions will admit (not that anyone believes in Horus or Dionysus any more).  There are exceptions to this.  For example, Buddha was a real person.  We know approximately when and where he lived and when he died.   Of course, there are few if any parallels between Buddha and Jesus because he was a real person, and therefore harder to mythologize.

There are literally hundreds of bogus claims, exaggerations and deceptions in this video, as well as a few facts which are best explained by a very different perspective than that of the author.   As for those hundreds of false claims, exaggerations and deceptions, I will leave them for you to do some research.

John Oakes