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According to Massey, "The mythical Messiah is Horus in the Osirian Mythos; Har-
Khuti in the Sut-Typhonian; Khunsu in that of Amen-Ra; Iu in the cult of Atum-Ra;
and the Christ of the Gospels is an amalgam of all these characters."
Osiris, Hercules, Mithra, Hermes, Prometheus, Perseus and others compare to the
Christian myth. According to Patrick Campbell of The Mythical Jesus, all served as
pre-Christian sun gods, yet all allegedly had gods for fathers, virgins for
mothers; had their births announced by stars; got born on the solstice around
December 25th; had tyrants who tried to kill them in their infancy; met violent
deaths; rose from the dead; and nearly all got worshiped by "wise men" and had
allegedly fasted for forty days. [McKinsey, Chapter 5]
The pre-Christian cult of Mithra had a deity of light and truth, son of the Most
High, fought against evil, presented the idea of the Logos. Pagan Mithraism
mysteries had the burial in a rock tomb, resurrection, sacrament of bread & water
(Eucharist), the marking on the forehead with a mystic mark, the symbol of the
Rock, the Seven Spirits and seven stars, all before the advent of Christianity.
Even Justin Martyr recognized the analogies between Christianity and Paganism. To
the Pagans, he wrote: "When we say that the Word, who is first born of God, was
produced without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was
crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven; we propound nothing
different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter
(Zeus)." [First Apology, ch. xxi]
Virtually all of the mythical accounts of a savior Jesus have parallels to past
pagan mythologies which existed long before Christianity and from the Jewish
scriptures that we now call the Old Testament. The accounts of these myths say
nothing about historical reality, but they do say a lot about believers, how they
believed, and how their beliefs spread.
The world has been for a long time engaged in writing lives of Jesus... The
library of such books has grown since then. But when we come to examine them, one
startling fact confronts us: all of these books relate to a personage concerning
whom there does not exist a single scrap of contemporary information -- not one!
By accepted tradition he was born in the reign of Augustus, the great literary age
of the nation of which he was a subject. In the Augustan age historians
flourished; poets, orators, critics and travelers abounded. Yet not one mentions
the name of Jesus Christ, much less any incident in his life. -Moncure D. Conway
[1832 - 1907] (Modern Thought)
It is only in comparatively modern times that the possibility was considered that
Jesus does not belong to history at all.-J.M. Robertson (Pagan Christs)
We know virtually nothing about the persons who wrote the gospels we call Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John. The gospels are so anonymous that their titles, all second-
century guesses, are all four wrong. Mark himself clearly did not know any
eyewitnesses of Jesus. All four gospels are anonymous texts. The familiar
attributions of the Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John come from the mid-
second century and later and we have no good historical reason to accept these
attributions. Many modern Biblical archaeologists now believe that the village of
Nazareth did not exist at the time of the birth and early life of Jesus. There is
simply no evidence for it. It was not until the third century that Jesus' cross of
execution became a common symbol of the Christian faith. A generation after Jesus'
death, when the Gospels were written, the Romans had destroyed the Jerusalem
Temple (in 70 C.E.); the most influential centers of Christianity were cities of
the Mediterranean world such as Alexandria, Antioch, Corinth, Damascus, Ephesus
and Rome. Although large number of Jews were also followers of Jesus, non-Jews
came to predominate in the early Church. They controlled how the Gospels were
written after 70 C.E. Other scholars have concluded that the Bible is the product
of a purely human endeavor, that the identity of the authors is forever lost and
that their work has been largely obliterated by centuries of translation and
editing.
Yet today, there are few Biblical scholars-- from liberal skeptics to conservative
evangelicals- who believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John actually wrote the
Gospels. Nowhere do the writers of the texts identify themselves by name or claim
unambiguously to have known or traveled with Jesus.
The tradition attributing the fourth Gospel to the Apostle John, the son of
Zebedee, is first noted by Irenaeus in A.D. 180. It is a tradition based largely
on what some view as the writer's reference to himself as "the beloved disciple"
and "the disciple whom Jesus loved." Current objection to John's authorship are
based largely on modern textural analyses that strongly suggest the fourth Gospel
was the work of several hands, probably followers of an elderly teacher in Asia
Minor named John who claimed as a young man to have been a disciple of Jesus.
It is important to recognize the obvious: The gospel story of Jesus is itself
apparently mythic from first to last." Belief cannot produce historical facts.
Many eyewitness accounts of alien extraterrestrials and their space craft not only
assert eyewitnesses but present blurry photos to boot! We do have an abundance of
evidence supporting the mythical evolution of Jesus. Virtually every detail in the
gospel stories occurred in pagan and/or Hebrew stories, long before the advent of
Christianity. We simply do not have a shred of evidence to determine the
historicity of a Jesus "the Christ." Jesus is a mythical figure in the tradition
of pagan mythology and almost nothing in all of ancient literature would lead one
to believe otherwise. Anyone wanting to believe Jesus lived and walked as a real
live human being must do so despite the evidence, not because of it.
Did a historical Muhammad exist?
Muhammad is widely believed to have been born in 570 C.E. in Mecca. The earliest
accounts we have of him date to 750 C.E. with the book Life by Ibn Ishaq, more
than one hundred years after Muhammad's death. Although this is the first and most
basic source for information about the life of Muhammad for all Muslims, it does
not present a very flattering portrait of him. Even then, we don't have any
original copies of Ibn Ishaq's work - we only have a later recension by Ibn Hisham
(a recension is a critical revision of a text which incorporates plausible
elements which can be found in varying sources). Because Hisham died in 834 C.E.,
that means that our earliest sources appear two hundred years after Muhammad died.
Not even the evidence we have from the Sufyandi period, 661-684, makes any mention
of Muhammad. Surviving papyri of that era say nothing, and the coins invoke only
Allah, not his Prophet. As late as the second century of the Muslim era, scholarly
opinion on Muhammad's birth date differed by as much as 85 years, demonstrating
that even at that point there was a great deal of variation in what people knew
about Muhammad. The focus on Mecca is also questionable. Muslim tradition teaches
that Mecca was an important crossroads for trade caravans, but the location of
Mecca today is not a natural stopping place for the incense route from south
Arabia to Syria. Contemporary non-Muslims sources also don't make any mention of
such a city, which is very strange if Mecca was indeed important for commerce and
religion. By and large, it appears that the Muslim belief that we have accurate
eyewitness reports for every aspect of Muhammad's life is not unlike similar
beliefs among Christians regarding Jesus and Orthodox Jews regarding Moses. The
motivation lies more in a need to believe than in a sound foundation based on
confirmed historical evidence. Given that, the following description of Muhammad's
life is based almost entirely upon the traditional beliefs of adherents and not
upon historically confirmable fact.
By the time of Ibn Hisham's writings, Islam had entered into extended contact with
Christianity, and Muhammad's biography was deliberately constructed in an effort
to offer a contrast to the gospel stories of Jesus. Indeed, for the first two
hundred years of Islam, the Arab conquerors were a minority ruling a non-Muslim
majority. Some scholarship estimates that by the middle of the eighth century,
Muslims constituted only eight percent of the subject populations, vastly
outnumbered by Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and others. The accounts suggest
that Muhammad was in charge of trade business of a rich widow fifteen years his
senior and he married her. In the year 610 C.E., at about the age of forty,
Muhammad experienced in a dream or dream-like state received instruction from God
on what he must believe and what he must do. These instructions were not a one-
time event, however, and lasted throughout his life. The first instruction was
that there existed only one god, and that strict monotheistic belief was required
of all people. The second involved socioeconomic justice for all, and the third
involved the existence of a final judgment for both the just and the unjust.
Muhammad's preaching of his new revelations was not especially welcome among his
fellow citizens of Mecca. After thirteen years of preaching, the small band of
followers he gathered was simply not powerful enough to take control of the city
of Mecca. Nevertheless, even if his standing among the city's leaders was not
especially good, he must have had a good enough reputation for the city of Medina
(located 200 miles north) to approach him and offer him the position of ruler
there. He thus moved his group to Medina in 622, an event which is called the
hijra and marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar. In Medina he established a
charter which guaranteed freedom of religion for the local Jews - but evidently he
expected them to quickly convert to Islam once they heard what it had to offer,
and he was disappointed when they didn't. It is at this point where we have the
only really secure date for early Muslim history, 622 C.E., which has been
confirmed on coins as a the beginning of a new era. What exactly this new era
meant is unclear, and there is no indication that it is the hijra of tradition.
The only information that we have about it is from documents 676 and 680 C.E., two
Nestorian documents which refer to 622 as the year of "the rule of the Arabs." At
this time, then, Muhammad changed the nature of the salat, the daily prayers which
each Muslim must recite. Previously all Muslims had faced Jerusalem when saying
the prayers, but now they all faced Mecca. This was surely connected to his
isappointment with the Jews. There are normally three reasons offered for
Muhammad's interest in taking Mecca. The first was that it was supposed to be an
important religious center for Arabs at the time - for his new religion to become
widespread, he needed that city. Second, it was supposed to be the seat of
Muhammad's own tribe, the Quraysh. If they could be won over, he could use them
and their allies to further spread his message. The third was that the Meccans
simply didn't like him very much and continued to harass him and Medina in an
effort to repress his efforts. The property and possessions of all of those who
left with him had been seized, and a genuine state of war existed between Mecca
and Medina. Various skirmishes eventually lead to a major battle at Badr, where
300 Medinians are supposed to have defeated one thousand Meccans. Because of this,
Muhammad was able to sign a treaty with several Bedouin tribes and gain their aid;
but he lost it again after a defeat to the Meccans the next year. During all of
this, Muhammad accused local Jewish tribes of conspiring to aid Mecca. After Badr,
the Medinese Jews were attacked and forced to emigrate to Syria. After the defeat
at Uhud, the Nadir tribe of Jews received the same fate. Two years later, after a
failed Meccan siege of Medina was over, the Qurayza tribe of Jews was attacked and
all the men were killed. Eventually, eight years after the hijra, Mecca was forced
to negotiate a peaceful surrender to Muhammad and almost all citizens became
Muslims. Thereafter Mecca would remain a center of devotion for Muslims all over
the world. During the next two years, Islam swept across Arabia with most cities
voluntarily joining, but a few remained stubborn and had to be brought in by
force. On June 8, 632 (eleven years after the hijra), Muhammad died.