I think a person has to establish a historical context for that kind of parallel, Xunzian. The standard, modern conception is going to be that central figures like Jesus, Mary, Paul, the disciples, and etc, all existed. Central events like the crucifixion, Sermon on the Mount, a something that convinced early followers that Christ was risen from the dead, and etc. are also taken as most likely true. Given that, is there room for an egyptology-based myth cycle to be overlayed on the facts? I still think most of the pagan-myth comparisons date back to biblical criticism of 100 year ago, when the common wisdom was that the whole thing was fiction. Divorcing from the ‘standard history’ is certainly acceptable- I mean, a believing Christian is obviously going to do it. I’m wondering how far you have to stray, though.
I don’t see why some couldn’t be incorporated. I don’t think it was a cynical attempt anymore than I think New Age was a cynical attempt. You’ve got figures that believe the Jewish God is real because, well, they are Jews. But they have also been exposed to some of the ideas of the Egyptian religion – both through the long historical contact between Egypt and Israel as well as through the recent fad sweeping the Empire. Some of these ideas also seem to be true to them. So elements are borrowed and incorporated as so often happens when cultures come in contact with one another. I’m not suggesting that Christianity is the Egyptian religion with the serial numbers filed off, just that cultures influence each other.
Maybe you should suggest it Xun…
You know your shit when it comes to religion.
Getting back to Christianity’s real origins, not Judaism’s (which as I said had little influence on what became Christianity), I think we can show the disconnect by looking at the underplayed central event of the cleansing of the Temple. I think it’s the most reliable historical NT event, along with the crucifixion, which the cleansing lead up to.
When the Bible says Jesus cleansed the temple, that doesn’t mean he alone stormed the money changing “vipers” as the event is almost universally portrayed. From Joshua to Washington, the leaders are attributed with the battles they lead, as was the case with Jesus. Jesus lead a band of zealots, trying to remove a corrupt priesthood. Are we supposed to believe that the moneychangers and temple guards just sat on their hands while their businesses were vandalized? They were obviously overwhelmed. But it backfired. It didn’t inspire the rest of the populace to rise up, especially when the priesthood acted quickly and went whining to the Romans to have Jesus crucified in order to nip the uprising in the bud–which had been against the priesthood only, so it is reasonable to assume that the Romans (Pilate) would have been reluctant to get involved.
I said all that to say this:
Jesus failed. The origin of everything that followed which we now call Christianity, is a corruption and cover up of Jesus’ failed Jewish movement to restore righteous leadership to the Jews (with Jesus as the messiah/king(?) The Jewish movement for such restoration continued up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, lead by Jesus brother, James). Such a cover up, blending as it did paganism with a divine Jesus, necessarily lead to a separation with Judaism, even with the monotheism which may or may not have been influenced by Akhenaten. It’s irrelevant. “Christianity” should rightly be called Paulism.
Admiring the posts here of X, Ucci and TPT. =D>
As usual, I’ll try a different direction. The “Book of Enoch”, circa 200 BCE, was well known by Moses, Paul and Jude. Of course it could not have been written by the Enos (Enoch) related to Adam unless one believes that such books are not pseudepigraphical, but represent some older oral tradition. So, why didn’t it appear in the Biblical canon? (It does in the Greek Orthodox Bible.) Did Iraneus forbid it?
The book presents a Fall scenario quite different from the one in the book of Genesis. Still, the book incorporates ancient myths from cultures other than the Hebrews. Some two millenia away from the book controversy, we are left with a cardstacked canon that reveals, other than historical references, little of the religious controversies of the first century. So how can we say what Christianity was then?
I could suggest it, but since I don’t actually believe it, I’m not sure what that would net. I think a lot of these sorts of cross-cultural comparisons are done by people with an agenda and all that gets established is the agenda. I’ll occasionally try and step in and say, “wait a second” but that’s all I can do.
Let’s suppose we wanted to link up the Aten cult with Judaism. I’d point out that the Levant was occupied by Egypt at around that time (I think it was Amenhotep III that conquered it, but it could have been Amenhotep I). After Amenhotep III dies, Egypt enters a period of minority rule by his oh-so-cleverly-named son Amenhotep IV. During this period, the Ra cult grew even more in power until it essentially ran the country. Rulers tend to frown on that sort of thing, so once Amenhotep IV was old enough to figure out what was going on he entered into a bitter powerstruggle with the Ra cult. At some point during this struggle, he used a ‘nuclear’ option and basically said that, “You have no power because your god isn’t real,” and then to cover his bases he pretty much asserted that the only real god was the one talking to him.
During this struggle, the Egyptian Empire also shrinks considerably as conquered territories go their own way. One of these territories was, you guessed it, the Levant. Now, I have to imagine that a lot of people around the time of this powerstruggle were watching and thinking “Holy crap! You can do that? Just say the other god doesn’t exist? Wow!” So, a local leader in the Levant (we may as well call him Moses) seizes on this idea and takes a local sky-god as his one-true-god. He then uses that to womp a Hathor cult that had been giving him trouble.
This narrative would line up pretty well with Exodus and history. You’ve got:
- The Hebrews being dominated by the Egyptians
- A quick transition from polytheism to monotheism on the part of the Hebrews (occasionally used in apologetics to demonstrate the truth of the religion)
- A golden cow that likes to party giving Moses trouble
- If Moses was an Egyptian magistrate making a power grab, it would explain his origin story and why it was fused with elements of the Gilgamesh epic (he wasn’t really an Egyptian, you see!) and why he had what seems to be a was staff.
But it also explains why the Jewish religion doesn’t really look much like the Egyptian religion beyond some monomythic elements present in any culture.
As for Christianity and the Egyptian mystery cults, I’d need to read more up on it. I think most Christians will agree that one of Christianity’s superiorities to Judaism is that their god is more accessible and generally nicer – that is, he behaves a little more like a sun god than a sky god. But where that inspiration came from is another matter. Egypt is a tempting source because of some of the reasons I stated in my last post to Ucci (and elsewhere). But it could have been a variety of other reasons too. Like in the elsewhere post I linked. I think most of it is bunkum and did my best to demonstrate that. But I do think that the fact that Egyptians tended to have multiple gods existing as a singular entity could have been useful/inspirational in developing ideas like the Trinity. Likewise, you’ve got a father and a son being two elements of the same thing – but I’m really thinking that is more of just a straight up monomythic element. You know, children grow up to become parents so representing them as elements of the same thing makes sense.
I guess my point, Xunzian, is that most of the time when I hear people talking about elements being incorporated into Christianity from the Egyptian religion, they're talking about things like their being 12 disciples, Jesus hanging on a Cross, events in His life that seem to mimic events in the lives of mythical characters. Events that these days, scholars seem to agree [i]actually happened[/i]. That an actual historical event resembles a fictional story doesn't say much. If you're talking about theology, and not alleged historical events, I have no problem with the idea that Egyptology influenced the Church Fathers to some degree, I mean, Plato did.
Oh yeah, all that shit is absolute bullshit. The 12 disciples I’m a little agnostic about . . . it is such a magic number. It doesn’t mean that there weren’t a group of people that followed him, but 12 is a little tricky. After all, didn’t the authors kinda replace Judas in a sneaky fashion after the whole execution-thing? To me, that would suggest that maybe there were 12 primary figures plus some other hangers-on. Which makes sense, since Jesus was probably a pretty popular dude in his day. I mean, people are still talking about him.
Same deal with Confucius. He had eight older sisters and one retarded older brother. At least according to classical sources. Eight is one of those magical numbers (like 12) so it makes sense to read it as “a bunch” as opposed to “precisely eight”. The older brother was due to naming conventions that clearly peg Confucius as a second son and, well, you can’t have the head figure in a patriarchal tradition where birth order is key being second born. But it lead to good things, like the disabled having a comparatively better situation in China than elsewhere (even if it was less than fantastic). So, if you press me, I’ll absolutely admit that Zhongni’s older brother probably wasn’t retarded (and if you really press me, I’d even suggest that Confucius might not have been entirely legitimate, in a William-sort-of-way).
But I think we can both agree that any tradition accumulates a certain amount of fluff around a real core. That Jesus had disciples, twelve (thirteen?) of which were important, is different from saying that Jesus had no disciples/didn’t exist.
Likewise, if I wanted to argue that the crown of thorns never existed, I could take a couple venues of varying degree of sanity. If I went, “Spikes! Sun! Son! Sun God! Wooga-booga!” I would expect you to kinda steer clear of me on the sidewalk. On the other hand, if I suggested that the crown of thorns was an evocative metaphor for the suffering Jesus underwent, I’d hope to get a little more credit. The former is really meta and would pretty much require the authors of the Gospels to have modern techniques for examining myths (which makes them either time-travelers or people in contact with an all-knowing being, or at least an all-up-until-now-knowing) whereas the latter is something that people, across time, would ‘get’ without too much imagination. And that is without even getting into archeological arguments. The former argument (even when eloquently worded) can be dismissed with a giggle. The latter argument can be rehashed involving sources and yada-yada and informed opinions, and eventually one side or the other will become the preferred interpretation (one probably already has!).
Likewise, if the Church Fathers took an idea-or-two from pagan sources (be they Plato or the Cult of Thebes), I don’t think that is really anything threatening to the Christian faith. It sounds circular, but I think it is actually an OK grounds for dismissal. If anybody pulls anything out that is so big and obvious that it debunks any traditional faith entirely, I’m gonna call shenanigans because people who care about said faith will have already encountered it and dealt with it (and if they haven’t, it is just out-and-out crazy). On the other hand, if it is minor, sure, let’s investigate it. Maybe there is something there. Maybe there isn’t. But it is, ahem, academic. People who care can hash it out but in terms of the general population, it is irrelevant.
Yeah, the important numbers thing is interesting. Like you said, Jesus obviously had a bunch of followers, not 12, and there’s so many ways to interpret that- did Jesus declare 12 people to be “The 12” because He wanted to invoke that special number? Did Church Fathers consider 12 of His guys to be Super Important because they wanted to invoke that number? Did there just happen to be 12 guys in His inner circle, and we’re reading into it? There’s a lot of different ways to read it, and you don’t even have to like, deny that this or that guy existed to come up with them. But of course, they’re 99% semantic, too.
The crown of thorns thing is even more convoluted. I mean, a bunch of pagans stuck it on His head, and God only knows what sort of weird meanings it had for them when they did it- I’m sure it wasn’t without meaning. They may well have had sun-god ooga booga stuff in their minds when they did it, right? So then, how could a person possibly separate pagan metaphors of an actual act, from very similar pagan metaphors of an alleged, identical act? Hell, the most likely scenario to my mind is: The romans stuck a crown of thorns on His head because it had a bunch of weird religious meaning to them to do so, and this detail made it into the Gospels because it had a bunch of related, though not identical, religious meaning to the author. So now you’ve got at least 2 layers of metaphor surrounding an actual event, and either one of those layers could be pointed at by a skeptic to say that it’s a sign that the event didn’t really happen!