• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1157 0

to befuddle them and trick them into rejecting him. Of course, this argument is casuistic and ridiculous, but it has worked for those who have been bedazzled by the biblical tale. It should be remembered that, over the millennia, Krishna, Buddha and others have also been considered by a great number of people to have been real persons, so this debate also begs the question of why believers do not follow these other "historical" characters, since they too claimed to be the "alpha and omega," the "way, truth and light," etc.

It was because of these older godmen that Jesus had to be carnalized, to distinguish him from them, with Christian proponents at the same time working to demonstrate that the others were either diabolical, mythical or merely evemerized heroes. The incarnation was of key importance, as the Christians said, "Your gods are all fantasy, but our God is real, because he was here in flesh to tell us exactly what he wants of us and to reveal his true nature and Fatherhood." For example, in the Epistle to Diognetus, dating to the second century, the author asks, "Before his advent, who among mankind had any notion at all of what God is?" In other words, Jesus was also created to reveal the nature of God. However, the need for the incarnation was likewise not new, as previous cultures were always expecting one. Indeed, as Massey says:

The doctrine of the incarnation had been evolved and established in the Osirian religion at least 4,000 and possibly 10,000 years before it was purloined and perverted in Christianity.2

And Wells says:

... the Osiris worshippers of ancient Egypt believed, as did the early Christians (Hebrews 4:14-15) that "man cannot be saved by a remote omnipotent deity but by one who has shared the experience of human suffering". . . . Initiation into the pagan mystery religions involved a "personal meeting with the god" . . .3

In fact, while the mystical and supernatural apparition of Jesus to Paul on the road to Damascus is portrayed as a unique experience, it is not, either then or now, as over the millennia and during the era in question, many gods commonly appeared mystically to their followers. As Fox relates:

The "presence" of Isis was invoked to help mortals in lawsuits and on journeys, and was experienced by adherents who gazed fondly on her statue. Very soon after his creation, the god Serapis had spread widely because he was accessible in dreams and appeared and gave commands to people of all classes. Evidence for gods being thought to attend their own banquets and sacrifices is known from the sixth to fourth centuries B.C., yet it surfaces again for us in the small invitation tickets to the "couch" of Serapis, known to us from the second century B.C. onwards.4

Walker further explains the necessity for the incarnation:

From the Christians' viewpoint, a real historical Jesus was essential to the basic premise of the faith: the possibility of immortality through identification with his own death and resurrection. Wellhausen rightly said Jesus would have no place in history unless he died and returned exactly as the Gospels said: "If Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain" (1 Corinthians 15:17). Still, despite centuries of research, no historical Jesus has come to light. It seems his story was not merely overlaid with myth; it was mythical to the core.5

In addition, Allegro states:

... (TJhe canonisation of the Joshua/Jesus legends focused so much popular piety and theological speculation on its central figure, that it became essential to historicize the myth, and successive generations of a largely non-Jewish Church were led to believe as fact the absurdly anachronistic and slanderously inaccurate picture painted in the Gospels of Jewish institutions in a Roman-dominated Palestine of the first century. Before long, pious pilgrims were scouring the Holy Land for relics of the Nazarene Master's life on earth, and erecting shrines to commemorate his activities and death in the most improbable places.6

He continues:

Unlike other eastern faiths, Christianity could "prove"