Did Paul inject Roman Pagan and other Polytheistic concepts into Christianity to attract the Gentiles ?

Question

"Christianity...[has become] the most perverted system that ever shone on man....Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus." --- Thomas Jefferson

“There is strong reason to believe that St. Paul fabricated the belief system of Christianity from Zoroastrian mythology. In order to hide Paul’s plaigerism… Christians burned the library of Alexandria in 390 A.D. Books in that library kept Mithra’s original story of what Pauline Doctrine is an almost exact copy. (George Sarton , Introduction to History of Sciences) ,

The Christian Trinity is a copy of the Pagan religion of Rome called Mithraism. Mithra was a half man half god who died for the sins of his followers. Guess what date the SUN god Mithra was born on ? - Thats right ...December 25th

The concept of God having a son is the basis of most Polytheistic religions and the exact opposite of the Abrahamic message of Monotheism. Your Lord is ONE – no partner, no Son , No God incarnate.

“The son-ship of Jesus Christ is the greatest fiction of human history.” (Lord Bishop of Canterbury Commission, the Spiritual Head of England, 1910.)

“The son-ship of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, the blood sacrifice of the lamb of God, atonement are not the teachings of Jesus. These are all inventions of Saint Paul who never really met Jesus.” (Hastings Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil)

“In the Christian world, you do not talk about God, when talking of god. Every Christian talks about his or her own conception of God “ (Nicholas Berdyeau, Destiny of Man.)

"The New Testament is mysteriously silent about Jesus between twelve and thirty years. I wonder what the Son of God had been doing on God's earth during that time ! " (Max Marshall, The Great Fiction)

“I counted 30,000 contradictions in the New Testament. (Dr. Maile, Confessions of a Sceptic)

"Initially there were 34 gospels that were compiled by word of mouth. Four were chosen for unclear reasons and 30 were left behind [burned]. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

"Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic but the gospels were written in Greek ! A man in Jerusalem wrote Messiah's Biography on hearsay. That is what the gospel is. (Martin Springler, A Quest for Truth)

“Few scholars can disagree that the fourth gospel was written by some nameless mystic between 95 to 125 C.E. “ (Dr. W.R. Inge, The Fall of Idols)

"All the gospels - Matthew, Luke and John openly contradict each other. ( Earnest Renan, Essay on Nationality)


///

Answer 1

Mostly he injected monotheistic Zoroastrian doctrines into the gospels.

Answer 2

There is not much known about Mithraism. There isn't much written. But there is more evidence that Mithraism took it's beliefs from Christianity. Mithra was originally born of a rock, but after Christianity took hold, it changed to Mithra being born of a virgin. So, it is more likely that Mithraism is the copycat.

We know that December 25 was the pagan Sun god's day. Christians have never denied that. It doesn't really mean anything...only that in order to keep the pagans from celebrating both...Christians took a day pagans already celebrated and changed it to a pure Christian day. So no one would worship the Sun god anymore.

Jesus does refer to himself as the Son of God. And the blood sacrifice...Jesus says "you must eat MY body and drink MY blood or you cannot have life within you."

The silence concerning the young adulthood of Jesus doesn't mean anything. The Gospels are an account of his ministry. The virgin birth is told to show the fulfillment of the prophecy. The Gospel's are not a blow by blow account of the life of Christ. They are an account of what matters to our salvation. His teachings, his death and his resurrection.

30,000 contradictions...not likely. There are no contradictions, only misunderstandings on our part. Because that person misinterprets the word of God in no way equals contradictions in the sacred scripture.

The four gospels were chosen because they were consistent with the teachings of Christ and with the Old Testament. At the time, there were MANY gnostic writings which were meant to confuse and mislead Christians. These are not true gospels but fakes that needed to be gotten rid of in order to stop the confusion.

Yes, the Gospels were written after the time of Christ and not by the actual Apostles. But they were written by those who were told by the Apostles what had happened and what to write. I have no problem with this. It doesn't change a thing. God is God and can inspire anyone to write the truth.

The Gospel of John was is the youngest Gospel. But some unamed mystic makes it sound less credible. I guess since the person you are quoting doesn't believe...hence the shading of his statement.

The Gospels do not contradict each other. They are to be read as one. Each an account from four different perspectives concerning the same events and life of the Son of God. When something happens, such as a car accident, the police interview many witnesses. Why? Why wouldn't one statement from one person do? Because different people remember and see different things. All of the statements are put together to reconstruct what happened. Same goes for the Gospels, they must be read as one.

Your entire question's logic is flimsy. It's obvious that you have read and quoted people who agree with you. In this world it's easy to find someone to agree...that hardly makes something true.

Answer 3

Asked and answered ad nausium.

1- Jefferson was a closet athiest, so I am not suprised he would say that. However, it is no more than his opinion.

2- If we burned all the copies, how do you know Christianity is a copy of zorastorism? Furthermore, Paul taught what Jesus taught http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/paul_invented_christianity.html

Furthermore, Jesus was not a copy of Mithras http://www.frontline-apologetics.com/mithras.htm


3- Dec 25 was selected as a day to celebrate Jesus birth. It was not intended to identify the actual date. It was selected in part as an alternative to pagan holy days, and in part (with its sister holy day in June celebrating John the Baptists birth) as symbolic of the lengthening of days and growing greatness of light (just as in June John's birthday sees the days growing shorter. "I grow lesser tha the may grow greater")

4- The triune nature of God is well supported by biblical evidence http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5212

5- My Lord bishop, if that was your position, you would not be a Christian. Jesus said "I and the father are one". God himself said "this is my son, in whom I am well pleased". Try reading the scripture you are supposed to be teaching.

6- Rashall needs very much to read the Bible, because it does teach those things. try the Gospel of Luke for starters.

7- Not sure what point Berdyeau is trying to make here, as the statement makes no sense.

8- And your point was?

9- I have not seen a single contradiction. I have seen mysteries, things that are hard to understand, especially since we are so far removed from the culture and events that are recorded. By all means, bring them out one at a time and, in the words of Isaiah, "come, let us reason together".

10- They were chosen due to their clarity of the message of Jesus, the different perspectives of the writers, and the closeness of the authors to Jesus. All but Luke were actual apostles who walked with Jesus. Luke was a historian who spoke directly with witnesses, apostles, and Paul. Try reading up on how we got the scripture and I think it will settle a lot of your concerns. http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/authenticity.html

11- Yes, Jesus did speak Aramaic. And Hebrew. the official lanugage of the day was Latin. The language of the educated people was Greek.

12- Most scholars would actually disagree. The Gospel of John was written by the apostle John near the end of his life, most likely around 70 AD.

13- They do not contradict each other any more than 4 eyewitnesses to the same auto accident would contradict each other as to what they saw. Try again.

Answer 4

It's hard to say how much of Christianity was invented by Paul and how much was already stolen from earlier religions by the time he got ahold of it. It's almost certainly heavily borrowing from various pagan religions (though I suspect Mithraism is not one of the major sources--there were plenty of Dionysus-Osiris cults around).


Edit: By the way, Moses did not write the Torah, and in fact no one wrote the Torah until after the Babylonian captivity. Before that, it was all oral tradition (several traditions, in fact), combined with other pagan legends (Babel and the Flood come to mind). The sources were combined into a book by a post-captivity priest.

Answer 5

I think that Paul's writings are not true to Jesus' teachings, but I don't think he borrowed most of what he said. Most of his writings in the Bible were telling people what to do, not so much telling people what happened. If anything, his motives for screwing up Christianity would be to eliminate the teachings that he saw as threatening. As for borrowing stuff from Mithraism and Zoroastrianism, that was without doubt done, just not necessarily by Paul.

Answer 6

Paul's christ was entirely a spiritual entity... just a Judaized version of all the other 'salvation cults' that were in vogue at the time. Paul was trying to 'update' Jewish beliefs in accordance with 'modern' Hellenistic philosophies.

Paul's early epistles give no indication whatsoever that he had ever even heard of an actual 'jesus' person who had walked the earth in the recent past. The 'historical' Jesus was a fiction that was created around 70 AD.

The OT is myth... the NT is a hoax.

Answer 7

i can understand where you might believe some of the concepts are "take offs" however all things had to evolve into something different. look at people - in various areas they change - in the old days men were considered tall if they were 5'6. homes have changed from caves and thatched huts to mansions. transportation changed from feet only to aniimals, to buggies to space ships.... feet are still here and still used, onlt things have progressed.

the Gospels do not contradict one another, rather the offer the same story from varying points of view. if we attended he same party we would both have different experiences and views on what took place based upon our internal and line of vision.

God is God. His Son is Jesus Christ - that's all there is to it.....

Answer 8

I was reading this long crap until I got to the part about Mithra being born on December 25.

Christians do not think that Christ was born on December 25. The Bible does not say that either.

Copy/paste/copy/paste. I'm going to sound like an atheist here, but I'll do it....

THINK FOR YOURSELF FOR ONCE!

Answer 9

Yeah if there were copyrights back in the day, modern Christianity wouldn't exist.
Moses is in the OT. Not the new. Paul had nothing to do with the OT. Even Jesus said it was outdated.

Answer 10

If Christ wasn't who he said he was, then why does everybody spend so much time trying to disprove him? We don't try and disprove Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, tooth fairies etc... Why? because we know they don't exist.

Society, to include extremist Muslims, go to great lengths to disprove Christs claim as being the son of God. So why do we spend so much time trying to show Christ and his teachings as false? It would seem to me that if we found Christ and his teachings to be wrong we would ignore him.

Obviously, I'm a Christian. But if you don't believe in Christianity, that's fine. You're entitled to believe in what you want. I just think it would be easier to ignore something you don't believe in rather than going around trying to disprove it.

Answer 11

No, Paul did not corrupt God's standards.

No, Paul did not adopt philosophies into true worship.

No, Paul upheld Jehovah's requirements and truths found in the OT.

Paul told about the apostasy that would come after him, that would do all the things you stated.

.