where everything and anything is available with the click of a mouse, including extremely bad and bogus "research," one needs to check sources and credentials very carefully to separate the "wheat"from the "chaff" (Matt 3:12; Luke 3:17). To repeat what skeptic Richard Carrier says in the DVD:
"You'll have someone make up a fake quote, or misrepresent a document, misrepresent theevidence. Then they'll put it on a web site, or put it in a book that's published by what people thinkis a respectable publisher. And then hundreds, thousands of Christians will read this and believe itbecause they assume, well this guy wouldn't lie. He wouldn't have made this stuff up. And so theygo and repeat it. And so you get the lie repeated many times, mostly by people who aren't lying,who really do think it's true but just didn't check." (Richard Carrier from "The God Who Wasn'tThere" DVD)
Unfortunately for Brian Flemming and his DVD, I've checked. And I wish more people would.
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors?
This "parallel pagan" argument or "copycat" thesis is found on a number of web sites critical of Christianity (mainly hyper-skeptical or atheist sites), and several Christian apologetics responses areavailable as well (seesources and links below). One of the early "sources" of this argument is the19th century pseudo-historical work of Kersey Graves
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors
(35 pagan gods or religious leaders are listed in chapter 1, several of them overlapping Flemming's list) :
"These have all received divine honors, have nearly all been worshiped as Gods, or sons of God;were mostly incarnated as Christs, Saviors, Messiahs, or Mediators; not a few of them werereputedly born of virgins; some of them filling a character almost identical with that ascribed bythe Christian's bible to Jesus Christ; many of them, like him, are reported to have been crucified;and all of them, taken together, furnish a prototype and parallel for nearly every importantincident and wonder-inciting miracle, doctrine and precept recorded in the New Testament, of theChristian's Savior. Surely, with so many Saviors the world cannot, or should not, be lost." (KerseyGraves, chapter 1"Rival Claims of the Saviors"alsohere)
Apparently Kersey Graves himself accepted the historicity of Jesus Christ (unlike Flemming's DVD);he was not a strict "mythicist":
"....Graves's hypothesis [is] that these various godmen were all 'historical personages' whopatterned themselves after this archetype...." and "....[Graves] was an evermerist, i.e. one whobelieves that these various crucified saviors and godmen were 'real people' who were deified withfairytales and myths added to their biographies. He was therefore not a mythicist...." (pages 1, 7of
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors
, in the forward by Acharya S from the AdventuresUnlimited Press edition, 2001; see also his chapter 15 "The Saviors are Real Personages").
It should be noted that professional skeptic and historian Richard Carrier (featured in Flemming'sDVD) hasdisavowed Kersey Graves as a reliable sourceand doesn't think much of the "parallel pagan" gods in Flemming's list. The supposed "parallels" either post-date Christianity's founding, or there is no good historical evidence in support of the "copycat" idea, or the "parallel" is simplymistaken. (Carrier suggests two more promising candidates --Inanna or Ishtar of the Sumerians, andZalmoxis of the Thracians-- not mentioned by Flemming).
"
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors: Or Christianity Before Christ
is unreliable, but nocomprehensive critique exists. Most scholars immediately recognize many of his findings asunsupported and dismiss Graves as useless. After all, a scholar who rarely cites a source isn'tuseful to have as a reference even if he is right....In general, even when the evidence is real, itoften only appears many years after Christianity began, and thus might be evidence of diffusion inthe other direction." (Richard Carrier,Kersey Graves and the World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors)
Brian Flemming has agreed
"Kersey Graves is full of crap"
(seeBeddru) and says he will producea "second edition" of the DVD with the unreliable material and errors removed. While Flemmingrejects the idea his DVD has anything to do with Kersey Graves' book, nevertheless the pagan parallel thesis is the same: "
Just like the other savior gods of the time, Paul's Christ Jesus died,rose, and ascended all in a mythical realm.
" (Flemming from "The God Who Wasn't There" DVD,
Evidence for Jesus and Parallel Pagan "Crucified Saviors" Examinedhttp://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/JesusEvidenceCrucifiedSaviors.ht3 of 3409-May-09 12:02 PM
Leave a Comment