Hopefully making theology simpler to understand! (2 Corinthians 1:12)

Full disclosure: I had to make this for a class. Fuller disclosure: I have wanted to make a similar video, so it worked out. I thought of doing it as a Give Me Five video, but I decided to make it a simple response video as if recorded in the middle of a conversation.

Below is a basic transcript, though I did deviate slightly here and there, especially the beginning and end.

The Authentic Jesus Story

In 2007, the “documentary” “Zeitgeist” was released, claiming in the beginning that the Christian Church took stories from pagan myths and created the Jesus Myth. In 2008, Bill Maher released his mockumentary “Religulous” which used many of the same claims when dealing with Christianity. Each Christmas and Easter, many of these same claims pop up:

• The Virgin Birth, Resurrection, having 12 Disciples, and being a miracle-worker were all taken from pagan myths.
  • Examples of these are Mithras, Horus, Osiris, Attis, and many others supposedly boasting virgin births, death with resurrection, having disciples, and being miracle workers.
• The Church has covered up these connections and then labeled the Gnostics heretics.
• Therefore, Jesus is not that special.

The issue is that these are all mostly or completely false.

Edward Winston of SkepticProject.com confirmed that Zeitgeist was based largely on books of questionable sourcing, especially Acharya S and her book “The Christ Conspiracy,” a book that holds to the claim that you become what you were raised to be (so, a Christian if born in a Christian home, a Buddhist if in a Buddhist home, etc.), a claim that Maher also repeated (which begs the question how so many atheists came from religious homes, and vice versa.) Her book and many others seem to be influenced mostly by the 1890 book “The Golden Bough” by James Frazer, of which Winston, and most scholars, say is a “gross misrepresentation of facts and research.”[1]

As Mark Strauss pointed out in his book Four Portraits, One Jesus, this virgin birth is unlike other mythologies, because, unlike gods coming to impregnate women, the Holy Spirit caused Mary to become pregnant and have a normal birth.[2] Ian Wishart researched multiple sources to show that none of the other gods had true “virgin births” if they even had a traditional birth; and in terms of death and resurrection, only one comes close from before the time of Christ – Osiris, who was chopped up and reassembled, becoming the god of the underworld – with all other supposed resurrection stories appearing after AD 150.[3] Others who went to the underworld either had not died first or were rescued by others, and they were not killed to take on the sins of others.

Whether the stories come from 150 years after Christ or 150 years ago or yesterday, there is no other story like that of Jesus. The Jewish believers would not accept a paganized story, and both Jews and pagans alike would have disregarded a physical resurrection in this current world if at all, as William Lane Craig has argued.[4]

It must be known and remembered that God gave Mary the choice to carry his Son, as seen in Luke 1:26-38. The resurrected Jesus was witnessed by not just the Twelve Apostles (technically Eleven, after Judas Iscariot killed himself), but, as shown in 1 Corinthians 15:3-9, he was also witnessed by over 500 people including his brothers, women, and the first major persecutor of the Church, Paul himself. And as he stated in verse 6, most of them were still alive when he wrote 1 Corinthians, though some had been martyred. He and Luke, especially, as seen in Luke and Acts, gave historical facts that could be checked out.

So, this is a “no” to modern skeptics and religious pluralism: Jesus was not an amalgam of ancient myths that were stolen by people hoping to get rich and famous. Most myths stole from the gospel, and the early Christians used history, evidence, and eyewitnesses to back up their claims. We can discuss each of these and other topics, but the story of Jesus is unique and even the inspiration for other stories. There is enough historical evidence to know that Jesus not only lived, but that his claims to be the Son of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29) and has died, risen again, and now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven can be trusted. Maybe next time we can talk more about the Trinity.

Bibliography

Craig, William Lane. “.” In Christian Apologetics: An Anthology of Primary Sources, edited by Khaldoun A. Sweis and Chad V. Meister, 651-685. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2012. https://bibliu.com/app/?bibliuMagicToken=fN5WbNnohghpomry73TRECj73V6JvLP9#/view/books/9780310589686/epub/OEBPS/c39.html#page_651.

Strauss, Mark L. Four Portraits, One Jesus: A Survey of Jesus and the Gospels. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2020. https://bibliu.com/app/?bibliuMagicToken=zAHzUQRokwv4Rp32Enrxfs59fNwStS5O#/view/books/9780310528685/epub/OEBPS/cover.html#.

Wishart, Ian. “The Jesus Myth: Is Christianity’s Central Story Borrowed from Older Legends?” Investigate 9, no. 107 (December 2009): 52–59.

Winston, Edward L. “Zeitgeist, the Movie Debunked – Movie Sources – Skeptic Project.” Skeptic Project, November 29, 2007. https://skepticproject.com/articles/zeitgeist/movie-sources/.

[1] Edward L. Winston, “Zeitgeist, the Movie Debunked – Movie Sources – Skeptic Project,” Skeptic Project, November 29, 2007. https://skepticproject.com/articles/zeitgeist/movie-sources/.

[2] Mark L. Strauss, Four Portraits, One Jesus: A Survey of Jesus and the Gospels, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2020), 564-65. https://bibliu.com/app/?bibliuMagicToken=zAHzUQRokwv4Rp32Enrxfs59fNwStS5O#/view/books/9780310528685/epub/OEBPS/cover.html#.

[3] Ian Wishart, “The Jesus Myth: Is Christianity’s Central Story Borrowed from Older Legends?” Investigate 9, no. 107 (December 2009): 52–59.

[4] William Lane Craig, “The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus,” in Christian Apologetics: An Anthology of Primary Sources, eds. Khaldoun A. Sweis and Chad V. Meister (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2012), 674-77. https://bibliu.com/app/?bibliuMagicToken=fN5WbNnohghpomry73TRECj73V6JvLP9#/view/books/9780310589686/epub/OEBPS/c39.html#page_651.