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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

 

Is Jesus a Copy-Cat Savior?

 

 

return to main-page of the "Jesus" article

 

 

Historical information about the 16 slain savior-gods sends fundamentalists into severe damage-control mode. You will witness a frantic scramble to preserve "true doctrines" - versions of "Snowballs in July, Doc!"

Attempts at an answer take two forms:

(1) "Satan used the 16 savior-gods as decoy so that when the true savior came, we'd reject it all as myth." This is a great example of "the Joker is Wild," with the mythical Satan becoming and doing whatever is required to maintain semblance of coherent worldview.

But, also,

(2) "The historical features of the 16 savior-gods represent things we would expect to receive from God! Therefore, we should not be amazed when these same features manifest in the life of Jesus, the real savior."

I will deal with (1) the Satan-myth in a separate article. But (2) presents a tawdry circular reasoning: The "things we would expect from God" - which are the "true doctrines" handed down to us by Church Councils - are in question here and under review; therefore, it's impermissible to use a debated issue as supporting "proof" of one's premise.

However, it doesn't matter. It's just one more weak proposition in the philosophical house-of-cards.

 

They would do better reading Durant than the Nicene Creed

Will Durant, in his eleven volumes of "The Story Of Civilization," explains it to us.

Every ancient civilization, with the exception of Greece, was controlled by the priest-elites. Even the king and soldiers knew better than to march into the temple. How did the high-priest become the power behind the throne? - by the fear of death, of course. All peoples, in every nation, were carefully instructed by ecclesiastical politicians that they were no good, existing under a curse, living only a hairsbreadth from divine extermination - but for the professional services of the high priest and his underlings.

If you wanted to cheat death, demons, the fires of hell, and an angry god, all you had to do was obey the priest, offer your sacrifices, pay your tithes and offerings, and the Nice Man would issue you a free pass to heaven.

This system worked well as a crowd-control measure for a long time ... just ask Constantine.

And in virtually all of these ancient societies, what was the juiciest part of the salvation process that would stop the show? That would be the worship of a savior-god. The details were somewhat different in the various cultures. It doesn't matter. The point is, the priests employed mythologies, pageantry, illusion, mysteries, to control the people, to separate them from their wealth, and to secure for themselves high office - all accomplished by harnessing and manipulating the fear of death.

 

Why were the details of the "16" so similar?

Durant and other historians help us to understand. Displaced peoples, conquered victims, carried the family-gods with them to new lands; as such, superstitions and legends were transplanted to far-flung parts of the Middle and Near East. Local priest-politicians, always the opportunists, borrowed and assimilated the myths and fables of migrant peoples to enslave them anew, now with their own ideas.

 

sounds a lot like our god 

In her lectures on classical mythology, Dr. Elizabeth Vandiver points out that many of the legends of ancient Greece, to an astonishing degree, match the essential elements of popular myth in Mesopotamia.

How is this possible? Not so hard. Soldiers, merchants, voyagers, displaced peoples took their “family gods” with them wherever they went – just as people do today.

Moreover, Vandiver asserts, all of this cross-fertilization of superstitious lore found fertile ground in a polytheistic world. People would say, “You believe in such-and-such god here in your country, but he sounds a lot like our god in many ways. Maybe he is our god with a different name.” And by this tolerant mixing-and-matching, similar legends, of common lineage, took root all over the ancient world.

May I hasten to point out to those wishing to support a “monotheistic” Jesus that the early Church was taken over by religious politicians who wanted to create a “big tent” movement. To the uneducated masses, they sold the idea that “Our gods in this church are very similar to the ones you’ve always believed in, so don't worry about it.”

And that’s why, as any scholar knows, there are dozens or scores of strict similarities between what became known as Christianity and long-entrenched pagan myth.

 

 

instead of going to the Odin Temple, now you go to the Jesus Church

The so-called church fathers hoped to create a big-tent, universal ("catholic") church. To that end, they adopted ideas, customs, and rituals commonly extant in the world at-large, ones that would be familiar to new converts. They attached the labels of "Jesus" and "Christianity" to old pagan ways in order to appeal to the widest possible audience. For example:

A History Of The English Language, by Professor Michael D.C. Drout, Wheaton College; an excerpt from his lectures:

“In 597 AD Pope Gregory sends Augustine of Canterbury (his future title, then-currently residing in Greece) to convert [what would later be called England). Augustine was able to convert King Ethelbert of Kent … and set up a Roman Catholic Church in Canterbury; the entomology of ‘Canterbury’ is [“city of the dwellers in Kent”]. Over the next 70 years [England] undergoes this remarkable bloodless revolution [of religious conversion because, typically, in history, rapid change of religion is caused by the sword, invading conquerors] … and this seems to be because Pope Gregory had the great idea to tell Augustine, ‘Don’t burn down the pagan temples, just leave them there, go in, take down the pagan idol, and put up the Christian cross.’ So, if you were used to having your daughter’s wedding at the Odin Temple, now it’s the Christian Church, but it’s pretty much the same place, and some people really liked this new Christianity thing, ‘so, ok, we’ll go along with it.’”

 

 

Why do people seek for a Savior? - is this a normal and healthy way of looking at life and yourself?

"Is it hard to understand"? - as Jim Croce sang in "Dreamin' Again."

When people are carefully instructed, from the cradle, that they're no good, then, naturally, a certain sense of inadequacy and self-loathing will trouble them. It will be difficult for the psychologically-abused to imagine themselves as able, as worthy, as sufficient for their own lives - and in this crisis of personal confidence, this poverty-of-spirit, they will seek for external support and crutch -- a Savior -- for what they perceive to be their diminished lives. It is one of the great lies, and hoodwinkings, of history.

 

 

Dreamin' Again

I'm not the same,
Can you blame me,
Is it hard to understand,
I can't forget,
You can't change me,
I am not that kind of man...

 

 

 

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