I’ve done some searching and basically I can’t find any long, protracted translations of hieroglyphics giving a detailed account of the Horus story. I’ve found little ones like here (“LEGEND OF THE BIRTH OF HORUS, SON OF ISIS AND OSIRIS”):
“The hymn concludes with a reference to the accession of Horus, son of Isis, the flesh and bone of Osiris, to the throne of his grandfather Keb, and to the welcome which he received from the Tchatcha, or Administrators of heaven, and the Company of the Gods, and the Lords of Truth, who assembled in the Great House of Heliopolis to acknowledge his sovereignty.”
An Egyptian hieroglyphs dictionary doesn’t even show a glyph for the word “angel”: jimloy.com/hiero/dict1.htm
So I’ve yet to find a glyph-by-glyph translation that goes through the whole Birth Of Horus story. And there might be hundreds of different stories. I’m not sure if there was one definitive Bible that set the standard for the Egyptian religion.
So I’m still having fun looking around (and yes, I’m on vacation all this week )
My point in citing evidence of the apotheosis of Caesar Augustus was to show that world historical figures of the ancient world were invariably clothed in layers of myth and legend.
The resurrection of Jesus as a matter of faith is an historical fact dating to the first century of the common era.
That the resurrection of Jesus is a matter of faith is evidenced by the fact that he appeared only to the faithful. That they went on to inform the western world of this is a matter of historical fact.
If Christians invented the ressurection it is unlikely that they would be willing to die for their belief in it. It is even more unlikely that they would have been willing to die for the cause of Christ if they had invented not only the resurrection, but the individual who was himself resurrected.
It’s also a matter of historical fact that Marshall Applewhite told his Heaven’s Gate cult followers that the Earth was going to ‘recycled’ and that they had to leave their bodies to reach the Next Level- does that mean he was correct? Furthermore the earliest Gospels weren’t written in Jesus’ purported lifetime, they were written well after. They weren’t even firsthand accounts but rather stories passed down from the tradition; it’s hearsay evidence.
You are making a fundamental error, Felix. The willingness to die for something doesn’t make it true in the slightest, and people have been willing to die for many causes. The aforementioned members of the Heaven’s Gate UFO cult died for their beliefs as did hundreds of Rev. Jim Jones followers in the Jonestown Massacre. Can we therefore conclude that both of those cults beliefs reflect some truth?
As I understand it, the analogous issue to the one proposed by this thread is whether or a Marshall Applewhite was an historical person or a fictional one. No doubt they did reach the next level. Whether that level was complete annihilation or something else, who can say?
No you fundamentally misunderstood what I wrote. I asserted that their willingness to die was a testamony to their belief that Jesus actually existed and to their belief that the resurrection actually took place.
Okay, that’s fine- so long as you understand that the strength of that belief has no bearing on whether or not said belief is true. You can believe as hard as you like that you can fly , but jump off a skyscraper and you’re still gonna go splat. And whatever you meant, I addressed what you actually said- that you doubted they’d die for a made up belief, even though it happens routinely.
I have one further comment- the Xtians that died later for their faith would have no more access to the truth of the matter than we do now. As I’ve already pointed out, the gospels were written well after the fact and reflect only the folklore, not any actual first-person accounts. Therefore, those people dying for their faith have no idea, realistically, whether they were made up or not.
Just look at the Mormons. Smith, a semi literate convicted con artist and criminal, “finds” magical gold plates out in the desert. No one else ever views them and he “dictates” the contents thru a screen to a scribe. Once finished, the plates are magically whisked to Heaven. Now a cynical person might think, in light of his convictions for fraud and the fact that no other living person ever saw the plates, that he made the whole thing up. Yet the CoLDS has millions of adherents as is apparently one of the fastest growing religions in the US. Just tell one of them now that the whole thing was fabricated out of whole clothe- you’ll get the same reaction as you would if you said it to any other Christian.
That’s the point of religion, it’s a confidence game. Every bit of holy writ on Earth was ultimate written by a human hand, and only the person actually doing the writing knows the source of the inspiration. It reflects only his internal mind and isn’t generally subject to outside verification. If the this latter point isn’t clear enough I can elaborate on it later.
The oldest book in the New Testament is 1 Thessalonians written by Paul, and it was written around 49-51. Paul continued writing letters up until his death in 67, so we have a range of 49-67 for all of his letters. Contempoaries of Jesus would still ahve been living at that time. His letter relect that the practice of following Jesus was already underway before his conversion.
The point of the OP of this thread is that Jesus was purely mythological and not an historic person. If you are not asserting that Joseph Smith was not an historic person then I don’t see the relevance of your point.
But these all could be after the fact modifications in the actual story made with cynical intent by the church. It does not mean Jesus was not real, it does make it seem likely that the handed down story has been manipulated.
Your analogy didn’t work. But you needn’t worry Phaedrus. Admission that the evidence for Jesus of Nazareth is as great as many other widely accepted historical figure from ancient history would be insufficient to convert you.
You’re right, Felix. Merely proving that there was a historical figure behind the myth wouldn’t lead one to believe he was divine. But it doesn’t matter since there’s barely a shred of evidence corroborating the Bible re Jesus existence.
Btw, there’s one big difference between Jesus and, say, Caesar- it doesn’t matter if the latter really existed. We don’t have laws based on his teachings. Now JC on the other hand… :-"
Actually the greatest proof for the reality of Jesus Christ is the Bible. The Bible stands is a rebuke to the instrument of its preservation. It can only be that the God of the Bible overpowered the perceptions of what’s been calling itself “church,” in order that we might have the evidence that Jesus Christ is all that the Bible says He is - the way, the truth and the light. If history hasn’t already been enough to make that clear, then let’s look out for what’s yet to come. “Let God be true, and every man a liar.”
All of your arguments, that I’ve read, are anti-Jesusmyth. While I wholeheartedly agree that Jesus the Christ is a Christian (mostly Pauline) creation, I’m certain there is an historical core to the figure. The reason I’m so interested in promoting that historical individual is the hope of exposing the myth when we can show who and what he really was.
There is something to be said for the Bible as evidence that he existed, it sprang up relatively quickly–within Jesus own generation. One of the biggest pieces of historical evidence is Jesus’ family which took over the Jewish Jerusalem “church” that Jesus started, headed by his brother James.
I think there are two core historical events, Jesus leading the cleansing of the Temple which lead up to his crucifixion. But that’s admittedly my conclusion.
For other evidence, I can recommend a book, The Jesus Dynasty by James D. Tabor, and his blog, jamestabor.com/blog/
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