Debunking the Jesus Debunkers
I first heard the claim that Jesus was a copycat of the Egyptian god Horus when I watched the so-called documentary Religulous. Horus supposedly walked on water, was born from a virgin, healed the sick, etc. Naturally, I was skeptical and tried doing some research but found only biased opinions that weren’t backed by much evidence. So what’s the deal?As for the crucifixion and resurrection, the party involved wasn’t Horus but Osiris, as per the above. Except Osiris wasn’t crucified—Seth initially had him nailed into a coffin. And he wasn’t really resurrected, just revived long enough to be a sperm donor, after which he died again.
Then again, there really isn’t a canonical version of the Horus story. Browsing through the stelae, I find a variant in which the child Horus is stung to death by a scorpion, then restored to life by the god Thoth. So OK, are there points of similarity between Jesus and Horus? I’ll be big about it and say sure. Is one copied from the other? Get out.
But let’s not fixate on Horus. The real difference between Egyptian mythology and the story of Jesus is that the former is clearly a fable full of beings with super powers, whereas the latter is told in realistic terms with the occasional miracle thrown in. The simplest explanation for this is that the New Testament is largely about a real person, with embellishments added to impress the rubes or make a doctrinal point. I venture to say this was the working assumption among a sizable fraction of scholars for a long time, and many still hold to it. But I’d also say there’s a hardening realization that, setting aside obvious supernatural elements, we’ll never know which if any parts of the Gospel describe actual events and which are made up.
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/42717/straight-dope-debunking-the-jesus-debunkers/
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were "more realistic" than the ridiculous fairy tales surrounding the alleged horus. That is a fairly silly claim. Supposedly this jesus was a god, was born from a virgin, performed an array of miracles which were supposed to, from a 1st century perspective, be evidence of godliness, including coming back from the dead, bringing dead people back to life, water into wine, infinite bread blah blah blah. The only things more realistic about jesus is that his life is set in an historical period that actually is documented (the historical period, not jesus,) and horus is sort of peculiar looking, and the Egyptians didn't write histories so the documentation is from monuments.
As far as the Egyptians were concerned, each pharaoh was the incarnation of horus. That is just as believable as jesus-son-of-god. Plus we have really good documentation for all these horus-incarnated-pharaohs, unlike the non-existent documentation of jesus-son-of-god.
Matthew and John.
The fact that they have been transcribed and an early copy of each found years later and in locales far from The Holy Land (or wherever) doesn't prove or disprove anything.
There were also gospels written by Mary Magdalene, and by Thomas, who was also an apostle. These were negated and avoided by the Council called to Rome, back in early Fourth Century. Political reasons for this avoidance of these gospels.
I know a lot of people want a damn photograph of Jesus, but that is not going to happen.
Josephus, a historian of the time, mentions a man that appears to be Jesus.
What gets me so hot under my collar is that currently a large group of people want to discredit all religious connections to Jesus.
I even read a recent history of Britain, which reflects on the time period of 1200 to 1600, and the author was trying to say that he didn't think that people really believed in the Church to the extent that has been reported of that time period. To which I say bull puckey. I mean, back at that time, uif you were known tobe an "unbeliever" you got thrown on a cart and taken to the local town square and either humiliated (which meant your business then suffered, since if local people felt you had been excommmunicated, then they avoided you and yr buisiness) or else you might be declared "evil" or "weird" (that is, "of the woods"
and then perhaps jailed.
Wikipedia:
them as best he could."[11][Notes 1] On the surface, this has been taken to imply that Matthew's Gospel itself was written in Hebrew or Aramaic by the apostle Matthew and later translated into Greek, but nowhere does the author claim to have been an eyewitness to events, and Matthew's Greek "reveals none of the telltale marks of a translation."[12][9] Scholars have put forward several theories to explain Papias: perhaps Matthew wrote two gospels, one, now lost, in Hebrew, the other our Greek version; or perhaps the logia was a collection of sayings rather than the gospel; or by dialektōi Papias may have meant that Matthew wrote in the Jewish style rather than in the Hebrew language.[11] The consensus is that Papias does not describe the Gospel of Matthew as we know it, and it is generally accepted that Matthew was written in Greek, not Aramaic or Hebrew.[13]
...
The majority view among scholars is that Matthew was a product of the last quarter of the 1st century.[22][Notes 2] This makes it a work of the second generation of Christians, for whom the defining event was the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE in the course of the First Jewish–Roman War (66-73 CE); from this point on, what had begun with Jesus of Nazareth as a Jewish messianic movement became an increasingly Gentile phenomenon evolving in time into a separate religion[23] Historically, the dating of Matthew was less clear,[24] and even some modern scholars have proposed that Matthew was written earlier.[25][26]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Matthew#Author
The gospel identifies its author as "the disciple whom Jesus loved." Although the text does not name this disciple, by the beginning of the 2nd century, a tradition had begun to form which identified him with John the Apostle, one of the Twelve (Jesus' innermost circle). Although some notable New Testament scholars affirm traditional Johannine scholarship,[20][21] the majority do not believe that John or one of the Apostles wrote it,[22][23][24][25][26][27] and trace it instead to a "Johannine community" which traced its traditions to John; the gospel itself shows signs of having been composed in three "layers", reaching its final form about 90–100 AD.[28][29] According to Victorinus[30][not in citation given] and Irenaeus,[31][not in citation given] the Bishops of Asia Minor requested John, in his old age, to write a gospel in response to Cerinthus, the Ebionites and other Jewish Christian groups which they deemed heretical.[32] This understanding remained in place until the end of the 18th century.[33]
The earliest manuscripts to contain the beginning of the gospel (Papyrus 66 and Papyrus 75), dating from around the year 200, entitled "The Gospel according to John".
According to some, the Gospel of John developed over a period of time in various stages,[34] summarized by Raymond E. Brown as follows:[35]
An initial version based on personal experience of Jesus;
A structured literary creation by the evangelist which draws upon additional sources;
The final harmony that presently exists in the New Testament canon, around 85–90 AD.[36]
Within this view of a complex and multi-layered history, it is meaningless to speak of a single "author" of John, but the title perhaps belongs best to the evangelist who came at the end of this process.[37] The final composition's comparatively late date, and its insistence upon Jesus as a divine being walking the earth in human form renders it highly problematical to scholars who attempt to evaluate Jesus' life in terms of literal historical truth.[38][39]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_John#Authorship
the low number of Jewish athletes? 
Helena, Constantine's mother, was a religious nut.
Hardly a proper poster boy for a religion of peace and love, I'd have thought?
in that pile of mud.
And I still believe in his death and resurrection. 
Good thread my friend.
I was pleased with how it turned out too. 
