JESUS, MUHAMMAD, BUDDHA - WHAT WERE THEY REALLY LIKE?
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There is always a suspicion that the 'official story' is not entirely true.
There is a suspicion that the 'biography' has had untrue bits added, and that there is a lot of 'spin'.
"Late in the third century B.C. Cleomenes, king of Sparta, embarked on a revolutionary policy of cancellation of debts, redistribution of land and emancipation of the helots (slaves).
"He was driven out of Sparta...
"In the story preserved by Plutarch, Cleomenes and twelve friends have a last supper together on the night before his death.
"He is betrayed to his enemies...
"His dead body is crucified.
"A prodigy occurs after the crucifixion; and the people of Alexandria call him a 'hero and son of the gods'."
So, the 'real Jesus', who taught that one should tune in to the Holy Spirit, may not have been crucified?
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Professor Robert M. Price has investigated Jesus, Muhammad and Buddha and gives his thoughts in Of Myth and Men.
Jesus
Price asks: was Jesus a holy man especially close to God, or a wise man filled with divine wisdom, or a mythic hero?
With the typical mythic hero from ancient times:
1. The hero's mother is a virgin
2. He is reputed to be a son of a god
3. Evil forces attempt to kill the infant or boy hero
4. He is spirited away to safety.
David Friedrich Strauss in The Life of Jesus Critically Examined suggests that Luke invented his story of the nativity.
Herod the Great died in 4 B.C.
New Testament accounts of the death of Jesus appear to be rewrites of various earlier stories.
The anointing of Jesus at Bethany is similar to Isis anointing the corpse of her husband Osiris to resurrect him, part of the mummy-resurrection mythos of Egypt.
Luke has one of Jesus' crucified colleagues bid him, "Remember me when you come into your kingdom," a phrase borrowed directly from Diodorus Siculus.
The divine portents attending Jesus' death on the cross reflect those at the crucifixion of rebel king Cleomenes of Sparta at Alexandria according to Plutarch.
These omens cause visitors to the cross in each case to declare the crucified one to be son of god.
As the Gospels have Mary Magdalene and her companions seek the body of Jesus only to find it gone, so do Isis, her sister Nephthys, and their maidens seek the slain Osiris.
The appearance of the risen Jesus to two disciples on the road to Emmaus is similar to the story of Asclepius appearing unrecognized to a woman.
...
Buddha
Buddha taught that by not grasping for things, life goes better.
Buddha taught that by not grasping for things, life goes better.
He did not see himself as being any kind of God.
However, bits seem to have been added to the story:
Some Buddhists are taught that:
Young Buddha was miraculously conceived and announced before birth as the saviour of the world.
One by one four deities appeared to him in human disguises...
The story of Buddha abandoning affluence is similar to that of the Jaina saint Vardhamana (usually called Mahavira), who supposedly lived a single generation earlier than Buddha.
When Buddha sits beneath the Bodhi Tree, he is protected from the demon's assaults by the hood canopy of the mythical Naga King, a hydralike cobra deity.
And so was the Jain hero Parsva, the predecessor of Mahavira.
Some Western scholars of Buddhism, including R. Otto Franke, think that Buddha is simply a collective name for earlier generations of unnamed Buddhist teachers.
Buddhist texts appear to disagree about whether or not there is an individual soul.
....
Muhammad
According to a reconstruction of Islamic origins entitled Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World by Patricia Crone and Michael Cook (1977):
Some Jews saw Umar, the second caliph of the Arab Empire, as the messiah.
These Jews saw Muhammad as the prophetic herald of 'Umar'.
The term "Muslim" appears first on the Dome of the Rock in 691 AD and nowhere else till the late eighth century.
The early Muslims were known as Hagarenes because they were engaged in a Hegira/Hijra, an Exodus from Arabia to Palestine, the Promised Land where the messiah must manifest himself.
The Hagarenes built the Dome of the Rock.
The Hagarenes then broke with Judaism and turned to Christianity.
The Hagarenes then broke with Judaism and turned to Christianity.
'Umar's messianic status was forgotten.
Jesus was accepted as messiah.
The first Arabic "king" of Jerusalem made a show of praying at Christian sites.
The Hagarenes come to adopt the name "Islam" seeing Muhammad as the person who has revived the Abrahamic faith.
The direction of prayer was switched from Jerusalem to Mecca.
The caliphs and imams were originally a priesthood and were called kahins (originally Cohens).
The rabbinical character of Sunni Islam came from the influence of Babylonian Judaism.
The caliphs and imams were originally a priesthood and were called kahins (originally Cohens).
The rabbinical character of Sunni Islam came from the influence of Babylonian Judaism.
Robert M. Price is Professor of Biblical Criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute and a member of the Free Inquiry Editorial Board. He is a member of the Jesus Seminar and is Regional Director of New York and North New Jersey for the Council for Secular Humanism. His book,Deconstructing Jesus is from Prometheus Books.
Labels: Buddha, Cleomenes, Hagarenes, Hagarism, Jesus, Muhammad, Robert M Price
posted by Anon @ 01:49
13 Comments
13 Comments:
Everyone knows Jesus was Irish. He had twelve drinking buddies, hung around with a bunch of prostitutes, and his mother thought he was God!
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/12/religion-christianity-belief-science
Religion, what a criminal invention. Almost nothing that we know from official sources is true. History written by victors, yes....
LOL, thats epic!
The world might be more peaceful if people would study comparative religion and mythology rather than having blind faith in the purveyors of religion. They would come to the realization that religions are created by men.
The book of Genesis begins with two different and contradictory creation myths which were derived from Babylonian myths which were derived from Sumerian myths. Read The Pre-biblical Protagonists Behind Genesis' Eve: Shamhat and Inanna (Ishtar) of the Epic of Gilgamesh:
In a Nutshell Summary:
I understand Eden's Eve is a fictional character, a fusion of at least six different characters appearing in earlier Mesopotamian myths: (1) Shamhat/Ukhat of the Epic of Gilgamesh; (2) Inanna/Ishtar of the Dumuzi Myths; (3) Nin-Ti of Dilmun; (4) Gishzida, (5) Dumuzi, and (6) Adapa of the Adapa and the Southwind Myth. The focus here is Shamhat and Inanna.
http://www.bibleorigins.net/EveasShamhatoftheEpicofGilgamesh.html
There was no walking talking Yahweh, no Adam, no Eve, no talking snake, no magical fruit trees, no fall of man, and therefore no need for Jesus to die for the remission of sins. Romans 5:12 (Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned) is false.
There are hundreds of contradictions in the Bible, as well as bogus prophecies, absurdities, and historical and scientific inaccuracies. The Bible is not the word of god, it is an anthology of falsehoods written to enrich and empower priests and rulers.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are built on faulty premises.
Adherents of the Abrahamic religions should read The Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis by Robert Graves and Raphael Patai.
http://en.bookfi.org/book/1180143
Perhaps they would stop slaughtering each other over disputes about whose falsehood is true if they understood that the underlying assumptions of their belief systems are rooted in mythology, not divine revelation.
Buddha sure was fat for someone who abandoned affluence.
Fascinating thread. Do not forget 'Krishna' and 'Christ' similarities:
http://krishna.org/christ-and-krishna-the-name-is-the-same/
'There are hundreds of contradictions in the Bible, as well as bogus prophecies, absurdities, and historical and scientific inaccuracies. The Bible is not the word of god, it is an anthology of falsehoods written to enrich and empower priests and rulers' - is the opposite version to the 'religious' who claim there's nothing to struggle with in scripture. No problems or difficulties. So we get, ‘hundreds of contradictions’ - or none.
For both, the answer’s in reading and facing the opposing view, to engage openly and intelligently with the arguments. I tend to read – blog comments – that punch and run. The outrage of ‘it’s... all, so-ob-v-io-us’ - and “I’m here to burst ‘their’ respective bubble”. This can undermine enquiry and study. It’s all too quick wins and dismissive – if only it was as easy. How many readers move in one direction or the other because of this approach? How many open the Bible, because what they read has provoked this, or how many throw the book in the bin?
Nevertheless, I’d rather have god-talk, almost one-way-or-the–other. That this is posted is counter intuitive for those who want to quickly shake up the god-botherers or god-debunkers. As soon as I see Aangirfan’s launching into the non-material and ‘other’ I’m grateful.
‘JESUS, MUHAMMAD, BUDDHA - WHAT WERE THEY REALLY LIKE?’ – BIG questions. Still requiring attention. This site is a bit of a lone voice in the diggie wilderness (Tap aside).
An ITV news poll out today suggests four-fifths of young people do think the Christian ‘myth’ is a force for good.
While I’d agree with the sentiment that if Jesus is ‘baloney’ it’s all somewhat flawed, I’d expect if the young discussed ‘why?’ the answers would sometimes be deep and certainly varied.
To more deep and varied eh
Mark
Their absence today and for 1400-2000 years condemns them as myth - or as voyeuristic tormenters.
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors (1875)
Kersey Graves
https://archive.org/details/worldssixteencr00gravgoog
http://martianvisitor.com/Sixteen.html
archetype (def.)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/archetype
"(in Jungian psychology) a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches. "
(Small fly in the ointment?
Ken Keyes Jr, The Hundredth Monkey (1981) - principle extracted here:
http://www.campbellmgold.com/archive_esoteric/hundredth_monkey.pdf
But I thought Keyes' book disproved the record of the original findings, so Hundredth Monkey Theory not proven. Or maybe I'm confusing Keyes with another author....)
Genesis of the Bible and its pantheon preceded?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_British_Edda
https://archive.org/details/Waddell-TheBritishEdda
What was Jesus like! I am still confused between being a nestorian or a eutychian monophysites.
I do know that something transpired that made men of letters excited and made them do and write things which put them in mortal danger. To be bold I believe that monotheistics have to depend on some form of written history of past events to be able to look past the victory narrative to understand the real substance of the cause?
These three are winners in death and therefor winners in life?
Real or imagined
Plenty of evidence humanity is hard-wired for religious belief- Why/How? Evolutionary advantage? Creative design? Fluke?
Available on YouTube - " The Real Jesus: Paul Maier presents new evidence from history and archeology at Iowa State" Dr. Paul L. Maier was a professor of ancient history for several decades at West Michigan State, and author of several books.
Why did Christopher Hitchens have to die when he did, when we need him more than ever to bring some reason and sanity to all this.
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