My friend said the story of Jesus is not origonal! is this true?

Question

He said it had been told in various forms many times before, for thousands of years!

Answer 1

Absolutely true. Mithras... Adonis... Horus... others. There are common elements in all of these stories... virgin birth... wise men led by a star... 12 'companions'... miracles... teaching... final meal... persecution... crucifixion... ressurection after 3-days... ascension into heaven. This is the 'suffering-hero/king-god' archetype... a very common theme in those times.

Salvation cults were a dime-a-dozen in biblical times. The christ-cult was originally a midrashic up-dating of Judaism, attempting to incorporate 'modern' Hellenistic philosophical ideas. That describes the Christianity of Paul/Saul. Paul's early epistles give not even a HINT of the idea that his teachings had anything at all to do with a 'human' christ who had lived on earth in the recent past... his 'christ' operated strictly in 'heavenly' realms.

The idea for a 'human' christ did not arise until around 70AD... the Gospel of Mark. This is where the 'suffering-hero/king-god' archetype came into play... not the history of a man's life... just a series of vignettes in the archetype form, modified to incorporate reference to Hebrew scripture in order to create the illusions of prophecies fulfilled.

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke came much later... some scholars say after the beginning of the 2nd century. Both used Mark as a template, and fleshed it out with 'sayings' of Jesus, from a common source... the 'Q-document'... sayings which were Judaized versions of philosophical tidbits from the Greek 'cynic' and 'stoic' philosophies. This accounts for a lot of the discrepancies in the gospels... Matthew and Luke each invented scenes for Jesus to deliver these 'sayings'... but their scenes were different. Same sayings... different settings.

It is interesting to note that the total 'Jesus-time' accounted for in the bible ads up to no more than 3-weeks.

"There is not a single contemporary historical mention of Jesus, not by Romans or by Jews, not by believers or by unbelievers, not during his entire lifetime. This does not disprove his existence, but it certainly casts great doubt on the historicity of a man who was supposedly widely known to have made a great impact on the world. Someone should have noticed." ~ Dan Barker

"The Gospel story, with its figure of Jesus of Nazareth, cannot be found before the Gospels. In Christian writings earlier than Mark, including almost all of the New Testament epistles, as well as in many writings from the second century, the object of Christian faith is never spoken of as a human man who had recently lived, taught, performed miracles, suffered and died at the hands of human authorities, or rose from a tomb outside Jerusalem. There is no sign in the epistles of Mary or Joseph, Judas or John the Baptist, no birth story, teaching or appointment of apostles by Jesus, no mention of holy places or sites of Jesus’ career, not even the hill of Calvary or the empty tomb. This silence is so pervasive and so perplexing that attempted explanations for it have proven inadequate." ~ Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle

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Answer 2

The story of Jesus is not original. The same story has been told for thousands of years and it appears in many different religions long before Jesus came about.

Answer 3

the story of mythras is older and very similar also allot of similarities in rituals although mythras was a men only cult of the Romans, but their is also Simon who also featured in the bible has a similar story, some of the old testament can also be found in other geographical arias such as Persia with the flood, monotheism from kink tuts father and worship of aten even the scroll of ani aka Egyptian book of the dead has similarities with the ten commandments and other laws and Jewish cosmology and concepts of sin. the christian cosmological system can be attributed to the Greeks and allot of the rites could of had origins with the Greek and Egyptian systems of worship as well as Babylonian customs.
persian gods can have alot of similarities to demons including the names.

Answer 4

It is true. There were sixtreen crucified messiahs before Jesus. There are many parallels between Jesus and Horus, Mithras, Dionysus, Krishna, Osiris and others. It doesn't mean the stories were borrowed from each other or that the stories refer to the same person. God keeps repeating himself until we learn.

Answer 5

Read "The Golden Bough" by J. G. Frazer. It's hard work, but worth it. He gives hundreds of accounts of parallel myths from all over the world.

Answer 6

Your friend is right. The various god-man characters have some small differences, but they're obviously just variations on a theme.

Answer 7

This may have escaped your notice but no stories are original - there are only a limited number of themes.

Answer 8

thats pretty much hit the nail on the head, no story will stay the same for thousands of years and you can even buy different versions of the bible!

Answer 9

Off course it's not true, the story of jesus is fiction

Answer 10

There may be other similar stories in other religions, some that predate Jesus, but the truth is there is more evidence that Jesus lived and was not fictional than there is regarding Julius Ceasar, and we would not question his existence. Roman, and Jewish Historians(including Josephus) told of Jesus, who lived, taught, did unexplainable miracles, and died. They even report that rumours of resurrection were rife. The Jews do not dismiss Jesus as fiction, but say his body was stolen , and that he was a blasphemer, claiming to be God.
So Jesus' existence, and activity is fairly solidly proven, but interpreting that is where faith comes in.