Virgin Births (an excerpt from The Heathen’s Guide to Christmas)
The Nativity
‘I wanted to give birth as opposed to being delivered.‘ ~ Ricki Lake
Let’s start with a little game of Virgin Birth. Here’s the way it works: find someone who’s pro-Christian/pro-Christmas. After assuring them that you’re not going to offend them with a bit of historical fact (lie) read the following bits out loud and ask them to guess who you’re talking about. You get one point for pissing them off, five points for being told you’re going to hell, and 25 points (and a mention on my website) if they actually haul off and hit you.
Here we go, Scenario One:
Born on December 25 to a virgin mother, this great man later sacrificed his life so he could save all humanity from eternal torment. He died at Easter of acute crucifixion, and descended for three days into the underworld. On Easter Sunday, he rose again. To commemorate this heroic story, his followers wore an image of him being crucified and he was symbolically eaten by his followers in the form of bread during services.
Answer: Attis, a Phrygian god from Asia Minor. If anyone said Jesus, point your finger, laugh, and sign yourself up for 5 points. That one was pretty obscure though. To be fair, let’s jump ahead a bit to the actual time of Jesus…
Scenario Two:
He was worshipped in Jerusalem in the 1st century. He was the Son of God. The Creator made his mother pregnant through mystic means and his flesh and blood were symbolically eaten in the form of bread and wine by his devotees to celebrate his birth on December 25. The guy’s into healing, saving your soul, and eternal love. Oh… and a star appeared above when he was born. Don’t forget to mention the star.
Answer: Dionysus, the son of Zeus. Dionysian worship was really big in Rome and all the territories that Rome controlled, including Israel/Judea.
Ok, let’s try this one on for size…
Scenario Three:
A savior-god called the Lord of Lords, King of Kings, God of Gods. He is the Resurrection and the Life, the Good Shepherd, yadda yadda, (you get the idea). Three Wise Men announced his birth. His followers ate cakes of wheat that symbolized his body, and he was worshipped in Judea in the first century AD.
Answer: That one’s Osiris, the Egyptian God who was chopped into 14 pieces as a sacrifice for all humanity. The difference between his lore and Jesus’ is that when Osiris came back from the dead, when Isis helped him out, she couldn’t (or wouldn’t) find his penis. For this reason Osiris is generally portrayed as neutered. Rome had accepted Osiris into the Hall of Gods by the time of Jesus, and Osiris worship was an accepted practice under Rome’s Hellenism. (Hellenism, by the way, was kind of a syncratic mish-mash of all the gods into one religion. Syncratic, by the way, is just a big word for mish-mash.)
OK… that’s three virgin births and three resurrections, and we’re still not up to the late great JC. Here comes my favorite…
Scenario Four:
A guy born of a virgin on December 25 (popular day for virgin births, huh?). As an adult he casts out demons, cures people and walks on water. He was killed to save all humanity, came back from the dead, then ascended into heaven. He’ll come again to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.
The Answer: Mithra, the god of Mithraism (also associated with Zoroastrianism). It was from this religion that Christianity stole the bulk of its lore. Mithra was the Sol Invictus, or Unconquerable Sun. He did battle on behalf of humanity, died a martyr, and rose again. His story comes complete with 12 apostles, a Last Supper, the Wise Men and the Shepherds bit. His Godly Father, Ahura Mazda, was the One True God (except for that other pesky god he kept having trouble with.)
Tally up your score and see how you did. If you’re bleeding or incapable of writing because you’ve just had your hands broken, don’t bother counting it all up. You win automatically.
Written by Wm. Hopper, author of “The Heathen’s Guide to World Religions”
Not for Sheep
Filed under Christianity, Daily Blog, History Bits, Western Religions · Tagged with Atheism, atheist, virgin birth
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[...] a comment » Around every holiday season (be it Christmas or Easter) the idea that the Christian history is somehow connect to Mithra, Attis, Dionysus, Osiris arises and is uses to demonstrated that Christianity is [...]
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(I will assume you are LDS, not RLDS).
The issue comes up because it is so blatantly true. Whether there is any truth i Christianity or not, the proponents of the faith have to admit that socially, the faith stole a lot of its myths from other religions. This has always been the way of it… newer religions using existing theologies to validate their own. Religion Marketing 101.
Actually, I am not LDS – which a casual reading of my blog would quickly tell. No, what I admit is that the scaffolding that is known as modern Christianity as adopted myths and rituals, understandings as well, from other religions. This is easily known and seen, even by those that practice such stolen things. You are quick to lump us into one branch, but you forget that many seek only what is said in the Scriptures, nothing else. Not ritual, not adopted traditions, only what we can read and understand, going not beyond what is written.
The scriptures themselves are a product of the same stolen practices, enshrined through councils, myths and rituals. Many of the proverbs, stories, and events that were adopted into the Bible can be found in other cultures, other holy books. To trust the bible as holy scripture is to trust Emperor Constantine and 300 politically motivated bishops who put the books together into one “bible”.
In short, the search for any real Christianity has to start by sorting through the BS that was laid over top of whatever was originally there… if anything.
The first real council came in 325, long after the scriptures were written, unless of course you consider all religion created. The myth that Constantine ‘put together’ the bible in 325 is false, as the Canon of Scripture was essentially completed in the Core by the time of Ignatius. (100)
Give me a honest opinion, here, please: http://thechurchofjesuschrist.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/the-ultimate-conspiracy-theory-%C2%AB-woman-on-the-edge-of-reality/
There are manuscript evidence from the 60′s that the Gospels (which would make them 30 years removed) are remarkably accurate in text crit.
I think the cannon set down in Sicily a few years earlier was a political reaction to the rise of “the Gnostic heresy”. The Roman church (which was heavily influenced by Constantine and Roman culture) had a Rome-friendly concept of a divine “man-god” akin to Apollo. That “sold” in Rome. The idea of a religion started by a simple rabbi (Jesus) simply would not sell.
Nicaea was the editing point… the point where Jesus became divine by virtue of the books that were accepted into the Codex. ALL of the rejected texts reflecteed elements of a non-divine Jesus. That was the main reason for the council.
Now, whether you attribute this to the influence of Constantine or to the overall influence of Roman culture is debatable, but imho it was here that the stories of a Jewish rabbi became the stories of the all-powerful divine god incarnate, akin to many of the Roman and Greek myths.
All of this is interesting and compelling albeit well-documented stuff. But what it does not address is the apparent need for a god of any kind, a need that seems to reach back into the darkest recesses of history even as it seeps into the darkest uncharted areas of our unconscious. All religions share the use of archetypes, both borrowed and new, to appeal to this universal need, and it is that need that is the real issue- not how the need is fulfilled. Unless of course you want to hold a war party and rally the troops around your own collection of mythic motivators, and then it becomes a very big deal indeed.
Christianity in the West has a diminishing role of containing impulsive behaviour, a role that has been largely supplanted by education, jurisprudence and even entertainment’s morality plays. If all we are left with is the quaint fairy tales of biblical scripture, religion is in trouble indeed.
I’ve been at this for fourteen years. Trust me, I’m one of the reasons this stuff is well documented.
i wonder if the myth of a resurrected savoiur was what rome required to dream of a resurrected rome. the fall of rome was thought impossible and it left a huge scar on the ethnic-esteem of the west.
– certainly, almost all the ideas of christianity come from previous religions (virgin birth, ‘light of the world’/son of god, dying to save man from his sins, december 25th birthday, star, manger, three wise-men etc)
– the parables stand out as something that could easily have originated from a lao tzu/confucious- type character (maybe the historical jesus) they have a personality to them & sound like the originator was on a roll when it came to allegorical meaning. but the rest of the religion seems pretty much lifted from previous faiths.
– another mention: i think one could argue — from the parable of the good samaritan — that christianity is pacifist. (or meant to be) i’m not sure if the other faiths mentioned above were pacifist — i’m pretty sure mithraism wasn’t. but anyways … that could be one small difference between christianity & some of these antecedent or coeval faiths.
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I have a problem with this article, though. While I fully agree that Christianity and Judaism are derivative at best and their evolution are quite clear, (The Hebrews’ time in Egypt at the time of Pharaoh Akhnaton & his monotheistic reformation, Babylon & the Hebrews’ exposure to and adoption of area myths and doctrines, Christ’s very Cyrus-like nativity story, the symbolic feast, etc, other similarities to previous religions), this piece is full of inaccuracies
Attis does bare similarity to Christ, as do the other gods you mention, but he was not crucified, nor was Osiris, nor Krishna, Apollo, nor any other god or alleged son of a god mentioned here or elsewhere on the Internet. The deities mentioned in your post do are not of virgin birth, either. The similarities are obvious w/ out these fallacies. I think this needs serious editing & correcting.