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Thread: Similarities between the mythical Jesus and Hercules..absolutely amazing!

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  1. #1
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    Similarities between the mythical Jesus and Hercules..absolutely amazing!

    I'm having an interesting discussion on religion with my Italian friend Moh but I didn't want to piss Heidi off by hijacking the thread so I started a new one. The similarites between Jesus and Hercules below are just AMAZING and if don't realize Jesus is just a mythical figure who NEVER actually existed on earth then you're denying reality!! I can't believe the ChristNUTS who are waiting over 2000 years for a mythical figure to appear!

    So you all tell me...don't you think Jesus is just mythology and nothing but a propoganda campaign by the church over THOUSANDS of years? Can't you tell that Jesus is one of HUNDREDS of gods and it is simply the most MARKETED of all gods but nothing indicates he actually lived on earth? After all Charlamagne and Constantine said "Convert or DIE!!"

    If a person accepts hearsay and accounts from believers as historical evidence for Jesus, then shouldn't they act consistently to other accounts based solely on hearsay and belief?

    To take one example, examine the evidence for Hercules of Greek mythology and you will find it parallels the "historicity" of Jesus to such an amazing degree that for Christian apologists to deny Hercules as a historical person belies and contradicts the very same methodology used for a historical Jesus.

    Note that Herculean myth resembles Jesus in many areas. The mortal and chaste Alcmene, the mother of Hercules, gave birth to him from a union with God (Zeus). Similar to Herod who wanted to kill Jesus, Hera wanted to kill Hercules. Like Jesus, Hercules traveled the earth as a mortal helping mankind and performed miraculous deeds. Similar to Jesus who died and rose to heaven, Hercules died, rose to Mt. Olympus and became a god. Hercules gives example of perhaps the most popular hero in Ancient Greece and Rome. They believed that he actually lived, told stories about him, worshiped him, and dedicated temples to him.Likewise the "evidence" of Hercules closely parallels that of Jesus. We have historical people like Hesiod and Plato who mention Hercules in their writings. Similar to the way the gospels tell a narrative story of Jesus, so do we have the epic stories of Homer who depict the life of Hercules. Aesop tells stories and quotes the words of Hercules. Just as we have a brief mention of Jesus by Joesphus in his Antiquities, Joesphus also mentions Hercules (more times than Jesus), in the very same work (see: 1.15; 8.5.3; 10.11.1). Just as Tacitus mentions a Christus, so does he also mention Hercules many times in his Annals. And most importantly, just as we have no artifacts, writings or eyewitnesses about Hercules, we also have nothing about Jesus. All information about Hercules and Jesus comes from stories, beliefs, and hearsay. Should we then believe in a historical Hercules, simply because ancient historians mention him and that we have stories and beliefs about him? Of course not, and the same must apply to Jesus if we wish to hold any consistency to historicity.

    Some critics doubt that a historicized Jesus could develop from myth because they think there never occurred any precedence for it. We have many examples of myth from history but what about the other way around? This doubt fails in the light of the most obvious example-- the Greek mythologies where Greek and Roman writers including Diodorus, Cicero, Livy, etc., assumed that there must have existed a historical root for figures such as Hercules, Theseus, Odysseus, Minos, Dionysus, etc. These writers put their mythological heroes into an invented historical time chart. Herodotus, for example, tried to determine when Hercules lived. As Robert M. Price revealed, "The whole approach earned the name of Euhemerism, from Euhemerus who originated it." [Price, p. 250] Even today, we see many examples of seedling historicized mythologies: UFO adherents who's beliefs began as a dream of alien bodily invasion, and then expressed as actually having occurred (some of which have formed religious cults); beliefs of urban legends which started as pure fiction or hoaxes;

    People consider Hercules and other Greek gods as myth because people no longer believe in the Greek and Roman stories. When a civilization dies, so do their gods. Christianity and its church authorities, on the other hand, still hold a powerful influence on governments, institutions, and colleges. Anyone doing research on Jesus, even skeptics, had better allude to his existence or else risk future funding and damage to their reputations or fear embarrassment against their Christian friends. Christianity depends on establishing a historical Jesus and it will defend, at all costs, even the most unreliable sources. The faithful want to believe in Jesus, and belief alone can create intellectual barriers that leak even into atheist and secular thought. We have so many Christian professors, theologians and historical "experts" around the world that tell us we should accept a historical Jesus that if repeated often enough, it tends to convince even the most ardent skeptic. The establishment of history should never reside with the "experts" words alone or simply because a scholar has a reputation as a historian. Historical review has yet to achieve the reliability of scientific investigation, (and in fact, many times ignores it). If a scholar makes a historical claim, his assertion should depend primarily with the evidence itself and not just because he or she says so. Facts do not require belief. And whereas beliefs can live comfortably without evidence at all, facts depend on evidence.


    http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm
    Last edited by TheKindExecutioner; 10-04-2011 at 09:12 PM.

  2. #2
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    And this has what to do with the death penalty?

    Since you asked..I have never put much thought in to comparing Jesus to Hercules, although I do believe Jesus was a real person, but he wasn't immaculately conceived. I think a good portion of the human race needs something more than themselves to believe in.

  3. #3
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    It doesn't have to. That's why it's in the "Everything Else" section! :beguiled:

    Your statement reminds me of something. I think it was Voltaire who said even if god didn't exist man would feel the need to invent it. That's what's happened with Hercules, Jesus, etc.

  4. #4
    Senior Member Frequent Poster elsie's Avatar
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    Hi TKE,

    I have read your post here and find it very interesting. Would you mind if I ask you a few questions on your thoughts? I guess I would like to know when you came to believe as you do?

  5. #5
    AdamSmith
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    TKE, as long as you are in the mode of speculating about the origins of Christian theology, you should take a harder look at Sol Invictus.

    Whoever Jesus was, and wherever He came from, latter Roman Christian (today called Catholic) theology cloaks him in the guise of Sol Invictus.

    You are also correct that there were many ancient hero cults, older than Sol Invictus. However that is irrelevant to the development of Christianty, which largely occurred between A.D. 33 and 337, the latter end of which being the era of Constantine The Great.

    Constantine saw a vision of a cross of light, remember? It was on the eve of a great battle in which he was outnumbered, never a good thing in a military confrontation.

    He prayed. The vision of a cross of light in the sky and a voice accompanying it was the answer to his prayers.

    I suppose we will never truly know if it was Jesus who appeared to him that day, but it is well known that Constantine then became the most important person in the history of Christianity second only to Jesus, Peter, and Paul themselves.

    So make sure you give credit where credit is due.

    Hercules was ancient history even in those days. So you seem to have tripped upon a historical anomaly in your theological philosophy. Sol Invictus had more to do with the evolution of Christian theology in Europe through Constantine.

    Go back and re-read your sources, and then Google both Constantine and Sol Invictus.

    As for capital punishment and how it relates to religion and philosophy, those are open questions.

    You must remember that the USA and India are secular nations, influenced by religion, but governed independent of religion.

    Our Constitution lets us do anything that we can pass an amendment for. And passing an amendment is not easy.

    But if we were to finally resolve the hot button issue of capital punishment with a Federal amendment either way, either pro capital punishment or anti, that would resolve the issue. We are secular.

    The Bible mentions capital punishment in a few places in the Old Testament, from the pen of Moses, the adopted prince of Egypt who led the Hebrew speaking tribes out around 1400 B.C.E. But that was probably because Moses himself had learned about capital punishment from the Egyptian priests and scribes who educated him there.

    Like Heidi, I too believe that these historical characters, Moses and Jesus, were real people who actually lived in their times. They both had tremendous influence on our present times. As did Constantine.

    Q.E.D.
    Last edited by AdamSmith; 11-23-2013 at 02:07 PM.

  6. #6
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Constantine hated paganism and its violent and homosexual practices with such fury that he passed laws to repress them, and to exterminate the pagan priests of Egypt. Eusebius, one of our major primary writers on Constantine, recounts that:

    Consistently with this zeal he [Constantine] issued successive laws and ordinances, forbidding any to offer sacrifice to idols, to consult diviners, to erect images, or to pollute the cities with the sanguinary combats of gladiators. And inasmuch as the Egyptians, especially those of Alexandria, had been accustomed to honor their river through a priesthood composed of effeminate men, a further law was passed commanding the extermination of these as a corrupt and vicious class of persons, that no one might thenceforward be found tainted with the like impurity.

    We could reasonably compare these laws to those of Moses, which prescribe the death penalty for paganism and homosexuality. These laws were definitely influenced by Biblical laws, for, according to Eusebius, he would “devote himself to the perusal of the inspired writings.”

    Not only that, but Constantine built Constantinople to be a city without the blemish of heathenism and idolatry, without the worship of devils and pagan temples. In the words of St. Augustine, it was to be a city “without any temple or image of the demons.”

    Quoted from: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-.../3070281/posts

    Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

    It's a darned good thing our country's Founders created a secular republic.

  7. #7
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by elsie View Post
    Hi TKE,

    I have read your post here and find it very interesting. Would you mind if I ask you a few questions on your thoughts? I guess I would like to know when you came to believe as you do?
    Because I am an evidence based person and knew the bible was crap from the start. I've met many ex-christians over the years who left the religion after they found out how many errors and contradictions there are in the Bible. It is full of them and an obvious fairy tale!

    Everyone look at these very intersting scholarly quotes on the lack of evidence for the existence of Jesus & the apostles. You realize other religions have apostles so you automatically believe them just because somebody wrote it in a book? That is NOT evidence! There is not a single historical eyewitness who saw an earthly Jesus, Moses, or apostles!

    The world has been for a long time engaged in writing lives of Jesus... The library of such books has grown since then. But when we come to examine them, one startling fact confronts us: all of these books relate to a personage concerning whom there does not exist a single scrap of contemporary information -- not one! By accepted tradition he was born in the reign of Augustus, the great literary age of the nation of which he was a subject. In the Augustan age historians flourished; poets, orators, critics and travelers abounded. Yet not one mentions the name of Jesus Christ, much less any incident in his life.*-Moncure D. Conway [1832 - 1907] (Modern Thought)

    It is only in comparatively modern times that the possibility was considered that Jesus does not belong to history at all.-J.M. Robertson (Pagan Christs)

    We know virtually nothing about the persons who wrote the gospels we call Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.-Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, (The Gnostic Gospels)

    Some hoped to penetrate the various accounts and to discover the "historical Jesus". . . and that sorting out "authentic" material in the gospels was virtually impossible in the absence of independent evidence."-Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University

    The gospels are so anonymous that their titles, all second-century guesses, are all four wrong.-Randel McCraw Helms (Who Wrote the Gospels?)
    Last edited by TheKindExecutioner; 11-24-2013 at 12:29 AM.

  8. #8
    AdamSmith
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    So what do you believe, TKE?

    It's easy to tear down others' beliefs. And they can just as easily tear down yours.

    But what do you believe?

  9. #9
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Stfu

    When I paid all cost to start this site, one of my biggest pet peeves on another site was all THE GOD TALK! I am over it. I let you have this thread TKE, but bottom line I do not care about anyone's personal feelings about a divine being. And it has no place on MY SITE!!

    THIS IS A PRO-DEATH PENALTY WEB SITE!
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    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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