Some time ago I posted some links to information on the very unoriginality of the Jesus story:
Jesus in ancient Greece and Egypt?
The traditions of salvation from sin, martyrdom for humans, virgin births especially, closed mystery cults around the half-man/half-god figure and his followers eating of his body, are old old old traditions. So old and common in Asian and Middle Eastern religions that they had become almost cliche symbols used by people to represent certain elements of religiosity by the time the Jesus cult came about.
But check this out, that I had previously missed: Mithras.
A Roman god, coming from Persian and Greek origins (as most Roman gods did,) that was a “sun god” and referred to as the Light of the World, was celebrated around December 25th, was a savior of sins, virgin born, rose from the dead, and entreated his followers to symbolically eat of his body. And all of this came about LONG before Jesus’ birth.
Of course, the Christian response to the fact that there are countless similarities, almost direct copies, of the Jesus story throughout history prior to Jesus, would be that a) God allowed these fore-bearers to exist in order to prepare the way for the acceptance of Jesus, or b) The devil (oogly-boogly!) planted these pre-figures to Jesus in order to muddle the pot and prevent people from accepting Jesus as more than a johnny-come-lately, and create the very doubt I’m bringing up right now.
My personal reply to this: a) Silly. That takes a little more mental gymnastics and rationalization to deal with than the simplest answer of just, myth element sharing among human cultures. And why would God do something intended to “pave the way” that would more likely lead to confusion and doubt? Which leads to,
b) The devil sure does have God-like powers to make such blatant and tremendous trouble! You’d think God would have a problem with this, all this sowing to confusion and discord. In fact, if “God so loved the world” that he WANTS people to believe the message of Jesus, why create/allow so much confusion and doubt? By the looks of it, with as much evidence as there is that Jesus is a different version of the similar god-hero myths from all over the Middle East/Asia Minor, it would look like God doesn’t love us at all and wants us to be deceived and fall into the damnation he set us up for. (Again, no wonder the Gnostics believed Yahweh to be the cosmic “bad guy.” He’s the creator/allower of deception, pain, suffering, confusion despite the promises of love and mercy.)
Which is the reasonable answer?
1) The Jesus story uses the same traditions of religious elements that were commonplace in that time and area in order to give credence and promote familiarity with the story of this new man/god hero?
2) A loving and merciful God that WANTS us to believe in him and his son and have forgiveness (from the condition/situation/laws HE set up) created or allows the gross deception and confusion causing people to doubt the uniqueness of Jesus and his message?
Which one takes less cognitive dissonance to accept?
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