Is christianity a plagiarism?

Question

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8971123609530146514

Answer 1

Yes


This religion, cloaked in mystery and secrecy, has captivated the imaginations of scholars for generations. Many facts discovered sheds vital light on the cultural dynamics that led to the rise of Christianity. The National Geographic Society’s book “Great Religions of the World,” page 309 writes; “By Jesus’ time, East and West had mingled here for three centuries. Down columns of boulevards walked Roman soldiers loyal to the Persian god Mithras.” Mithras was a Persian deity. He was also the most widely venerated god in the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus. The Catholic Encyclopedia as well as the early Church Fathers found this religion of Mithras very disturbing, as there are so many similarities between the two religions, as follows:



1) Hundreds of years before Jesus, according to the Mithraic religion, three Wise Men of Persia came to visit the baby savior-god Mithra, bring him gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense.

2) Mithra was born on December 25 as told in the “Great Religions of the World”, page 330; “…it was the winter solstice celebrated by ancients as the birthday of Mithraism’s sun god”.c

3) According to Mithraism, before Mithra died on a cross, he celebrated a “Last Supper with his twelve disciples, who represented the twelve signs of the zodiac.

4) After the death of Mithra, his body was laid to rest in a rock tomb.

5) Mithra had a celibate priesthood.

6) Mithra ascended into heaven during the spring (Passover) equinox (the time when the sun crosses the equator making night and day of equal length).



As you can now see, Christianity derived many of its essential elements from the ancient religion of Mithraism. Mithraism became intertwined with the cult of Jesus to form what is known today as “Christianity.” Although literary sources on this religion are sparse, an abundance of material evidence exists in the many Mithraic temples and artifacts that archaeologists have found scattered throughout the Roman Empire, from England in the north and west to Palestine in the south and east. The temples were usually built underground in caves, which are filled with an extremely elaborate iconography (illustrating by pictures, figures and images). There were many hundreds of Mithraic temples in the Roman Empire, the greatest concentrations have been found in the city of Rome itself.



We often hear about how many of the traditions, rites and symbols of modern day "Christian" holidays have their roots in paganism. Have you ever wondered why December 25th was chosen to celebrate the birth of Jesus? Could it only be a consequence that ancient paganism and the story of Mithras' birth coincides with the Yule/Christmas season? If the accounts in the Bible are correct, the time of Jesus birth would have been closer to mid-summer, for this is when shepherds would have been "tending their flocks in the field " and the new lambs were born. Strange enough, the ancient pagan religion, Mithraism, which dates back over 4,000 years, also celebrated the birth of their "saviour" on December 25th.

Answer 2

Christianity isn't plagiarism. The plagiary began with Nimrod, Semiramis and Tammuz. Nimrod was Noah's grandson and Nimrod knew the plan of God because God does nothing unless He tells His prophets first. The fallen angels as well as the angels of God know the plan of God. Satan knew Jesus would be born in Bethlehem and Satan did everything he could to get Herod to kill Jesus before He was 2 yrs. old. Satan was told in the Garden, there would be enmity between his seed and the woman's seed. The representative seed of the woman is Christ.

Google your videos all that you want, but the Word of God does not change. Every prophecy written will come true because many have already come true and not one has failed.

God let Satan and Adam know their future. And Satan is the father of lies so all false cults and false religions are from Satan.

Basically 2 religions - God and man. Man's religion is underwritten by Satan and God's religion is written by God. God wrote it for all men to see so none could be deceived by Satan. Read the Holy Bible and forget what man has to say.

Answer 3

Goes without saying, any response to this ? should be a response to the entire movie. The short version is that there is no *absolutely* documentable, provable answer -- *either* *way*. The video itself beautifully provides so much of the information that bears this out. Where the video stumbles is where its author begins to assert that *he* has proven exactly what the patterns mean and by extension what the writings discussed are--and at the same time, by implication generalizes the qualities of some who profess belief in them as qualities of *all* of them--it's those times where the narrator says things like "is nothing more than...."

People who suggest that an incomprehensibly intelligent adversary--the mighty higher being described by the scriptures in question as formerly second in command of the entire universe & now called "father of lies"--planted previous interpretations of the pattern marked out by this Scripture's Messiah are ridiculed, with the point emphasized by the picture of said being as a little red horned cartoon.

What is not widely known is that Satan is not a name, but a title, and that title means "accuser" or legal prosecutor. According to the story we are examining, this is the role to which this being is actually appointed--or to which the being is confined, more accurately, after having made the decision to reject the Creator in the story *out of hand*, not out of a desire to know truth, but a desire to usurp the supreme honor and glory that the actual name often applied to this being references--meaning shining, or praised.

In this role, therefore, it is both this being's desire and *job* to, from the position of being lesser than no one except the Creator in wisdom and insight, look at the pattern of creation and discern how to pre-empt and divert attention away from what the Creator desires to communicate to human beings through it. Various idolatries are often even portrayed as confused with true worship, with many people not punished for them because of their ignorance, obviously because of similarities of concepts and distance in time and/or space from resounding demonstrations of truth. Why the whole setup this way? Because the human beings chose, themselves, to question the nature of their Creator, and were given what they desired by asking that question--a scenario where the Creator was more completely hidden from their senses, and thereafter only manifesting to the extent that they and later generations were willing to give belief--true, pure, human-power-independent belief, not political-expediency belief--a chance. Even belief in general needed opportunity for choice, so that even supernatural experience resulting from belief had its alternate source beside the Creator.

In response to the above, Occam's Razor is often trotted out, but it cuts both ways. Every complexity of one view can be matched to complexities of the other view, and can be shown to flow naturally from one--simple--and unprovable--primary assumption. The scriptures themselves contain repeated examples where even supernatural spectacles described to be as thoroughly proof-positive as can be for the witnesses, were doubted later or even on the spot by some of those witnesses because of a combination of other experiences they had which balanced them out + having a overpowering personal reason they desired to not believe what they were purported to demonstrate. This underscores the purposeful theme of the Scriptures that everyone must be given in their lifetime equally-weighted evidence in favor of and against the sort of Creator and Redeemer they portray in order to exercise the power of choice as, paradoxically, was designed. That paradox itself is given frequent treatment, and compared with its parallels in the attributes of justice vs. mercy, knowledge vs. wisdom, etc.

To get down to some specifics: The sign of 3 kings and Sirius pointing at the Sun, on the Solstice at or near December 25th, and that being the time of birth, does not fit the account given in the Gospels. If people were so thoroughly molding this story to fit the Sun-God motif, you would think they would have worked it out to get the date right. Instead, all the specifics of the story work out with other historical records to indicate the time of birth as the time of September--yes, the sign of the Virgin, the "house of Bread", which the video mentioned in an interesting aside without addressing how it conflicts with its Dec. 25th posit. And astrological events symbolizing this did occur that year (4 BCE)--not the Orion-Sirius alignment with the horizon which occurs every year--but a bright conjunction and specific maneuvers of Jupiter and Venus which match both the description in the Gospels and the ancient prophecy of Balaam, and during the season of the event as described in these writings.

Just as the Jewish day began at sundown, the Jewish year did not begin at the time of Solstice--the "midnight" of the year, like other calendars, but at the fall--the "sundown" of the year, as an expression of faith not in what was visible and demonstrably fading, but in what sustained everything and could sustain in the absence of everything--and this was why the timing of the birth falls to that time. Interestingly, however, this does place the *conception*, the hidden beginning, right near the solstice, but the cues very specifically point to the time of Chanukah, which gave a nod to the symbolic value of the solstice without being actually *tied* to it or promoting use of its iconography to bypass the individual mind and encourage contrived "groupthink" united by visual cues/logos/signs like the sun-cross symbols pointed out by the video.

The Christ of the Scriptures, as well as Paul, were very aware of this, calling the cross a potential cause for offense, like the serpent on a pole in the desert. The event was specifically designed to resoundingly confirm, clarify, and unify the ancient prophecies, and at the same time, let a fully-developed temptation remain to re-interpret it into a device for personal benefit, using the always-forbidden physical imagery representing the Creator, rather than an event to inspire abandonment of self-promotion, to keep the balance in play until all possible avenues of humanity's question about a Creator have been freely explored. Accompanying this was a more specific temptation to reject it all out of hand because to passing examination it *appeared* to promote the forbidden, when actually events conspired through the ones desiring that rejection to *impose* the forbidden things on the event.

As for the exactitude of parallels with Egyptian religion, what would one expect when these Scriptures themselves purport that the people who wrote them spent 400 years in Egypt, beginning with one of their patriarchs virtually ruling Egypt for a time, which could make a case for heavy influence to either pass from them to Egypt *or* vice versa. Furthermore, these people have commonly understood the patriarch's lives as foreshadowing their own destiny since ancient times, and ultimately, the destiny of Messiah, the foretold Redeemer.

As for the historical records about Christ, yes it is a title, but the other details of those records that might help identify what sort of Anointed and what surrounding events that may or may not match up were conveniently omitted from the video. And why was Justin Martyr, less than 200 years later, even at the point of discussing the miraculous claims about Christ, if there was question whether he even existed? The video asks why if he ascended "for all to see" everyone didn't know about him...well, it never says he ascended for all to see, only limited witnesses, specifically for the reasons stated, that the choice to revere him would truly be a choice, not forced by circumstances.

To conclude, the simplest way I can put it is that since Christianity purports to be a continuation of faith based on previous prophecy, and all these beginnings are in the ancient past, it is impossible to determine in a way admissible in any court who plagiarized from whom. Multiple matching flood accounts would certainly be expected, for instance, if the event actually happened--all of humanity should certainly have known about it. You can certainly deduce that there was a core of common knowledge in the beginning, and each group of people put their own particular spin on it. The question is, who preserved its meaning the most accurately? Who has the longest, best record of accurate preservation known today?

Back to the cross--I agree that the most compelling reason for doubting all of that is when Christians treat it as something that everyone ought to know without question is a fact, when their own sacred writings remind us that the message of the cross is foolishness to the world, and that the power of that event lies completely in its outrageousness--how counterintuitive it is that such a thing should happen *in just that way*, though one must acknowledge how fully possible all of its parts are--and *not* in its acceptability. Christians were always to present the message with the humility of one who knows how ridiculous it sounds, yet cannot deny the truth--not as one who glosses over all the difficulties in order to railroad it through on people.