
MH> Please tell me specifically what elements you think
MH> Christianity borrowed from what pre-existing religions.

        The Christian myth is almost totally Pagan in origin. I used to
    think that anything outside the Judeo/Christian/Moslem Belief System or
    worldview was Pagan. Such is not the case.

        The two main features of the CBS are the Eucharist and Sacrifice of
    a God man. These two features were well known and well loved by Pagan
    mystery cults centuries before the Christian Cults intergrated them
    into the Gospels.

        The Eucharist goes way back into history and is based upon the
    ritual consumption of the God man. Osiris, Dionysus, Attis and many
    others were ritually consumed. The practice dates back to prehistory
    when a human sacrifice was identified with the God (perhaps a
    Vegetative God) and was sacrificed and eaten. Over the ages human
    sacrifice was found detestable. Animals were then substituted and
    sacrificed as the ritual identifier of the God which was then followed
    by grain offerings, breads shaped into the form of the God, sometimes
    in the shapes of natural items (sun, moon, etc.).

        The mythos of the Jewish Christ integrated this practice into it's
    mysteries. There is strong reason for this. For some 200 plus years
    before the time recorded for Jesus the Greeks and their mystery cults
    invaded and changed Israel for all time. A war was instituted to
    diminish or wipeout the Hellenizing influence. Part of the Hellenizing
    influence was an effort to update or change the Jewish religion to
    something more applicable to the times. After the Maccabbes War the
    Hellenizing cultist were driven underground; right to the heart of the
    Jewish mystical culture. Hence the Greek influence upon the myth of
    Jesus.

        The sacrifice of the God man (Jesus, Attis, Adonis, Osiris) was a
    well known and well loved feature also. In fact it was necessary to
    have a willing sacrifice before a Eucharist could be performed. When
    the sacrifice was not willing the legs and sometimes arms of the
    sacrifice were broken to make it look like the sacrifice was willing
    (not struggling against the sacrificers). Jesus was a willing
    sacrifice.

        Images of Attis (Tammuz/Dummuzi) were nailed or impaled upon a pine
    tree. The Jews knew this and wrote "Cursed is he who hangs upon a
    tree." A goat was substituted for a boy in sacrifice to Dionysus at
    Potniae and a hart for a virgin at Laodicea. King Athamas had been
    called upon to sacrifice his first born son by the Delphic Oracle,
    Melenloas sacrificed two children in Egypt when stayed by contrary
    winds; three Persian boys were offered up at the battle of Salamis. It
    was only in the time of Hadrian that the annual human sacrifice to Zeus
    was abolished at Salamis in Cyprus. The God man Jesus was hung upon a
    tree; he was also the lamb of God. As such the sacrifice and Eucharist
    of the God man Jesus is purely Pagan in origin.

        Part of the older Pagan sacrifices was in the King sacrificing his
    only begotten son. Jesus was the only begotten son of the King of
    Israel, sacrificed to take away the sins of the world. This practice
    was overturned in the myth of Abraham and Issac when it was found
    detestable and injurious to the tribe or kingdom. Yet the God man Jesus
    was sacrificed in the flesh. This was done to appeal to the underground
    Greek mystery cults who had much in common with the Jewish Christian
    Cultist.

        "During centuries of this evolution, the Jewish people tasted many
    times the bitterness of despair and the profound doubt denounced by the
    last of the prophets. In periods when many went openly over to
    Hellenism, it could not be but the the ancient rites of the Semitic
    race were revived, as some are declared to have been in earlier times
    of trouble. Among the rites of expiation and propititiation, none stood
    traditionally higher than the sacrifice of the king, or the king's son.
    The Jews saw such an act performed for them, as it were, when the
    Romans under Anthony, at Herod's wish, scourged, crucified [lit. bound
    to stake], and beheaded Antigonous, the last of the Asmonean priest
    kings in 37 B.C." _Pagan_Christs_ page 44,45 by J. M. Robertson

        The mode of sacrifice was predetermined by previous Pagan doctrine.
    The type of sacrifice was also predetermined by Pagan doctrine. Both
    the sacrifice of the king, and the king's son were incorporated into
    the Gospel myth. The God man Jesus is both the King of the Jews and the
    son of God, the king of Israel.

        As stated before the sacrifice of the king or king's son was found
    injurious to the state. Before animal and grain sacrifices, criminals
    and prisoners of war were substituted. Yet the criminal had to be
    identified with the king. This was done by putting royal robes on the
    sacrifice and parading the sacrifice around, calling it the king.

        "The number three was of mystic significance in many parts of the
    East. The Dravidians of India sacrificed three victims to the Sun-god.
    In western as in eastern Asia, the number three would have its votaries
    in respect of trinitartian concepts as well as the primary notions of
    'the heavens, the earth, and the underworld.' Traditionally, the Syrian
    rite called for a royal victim. The substitution of a criminal for the
    king or kings son was repugnet, however, to the higher doctrine that
    the victim be unblemished. To solve this problem one of the malefactors
    was distinguished from the other criminals by a ritual of mock-crowning
    and robing in the spirit of 'sympathetic magic'. By parading him as
    king, and calling the others what indeed they were, it was possible to
    attain the semblence of a truly august sacrifice." _Pagan_Christs_, by
    J.M. Robertson page 45

        There is nothing in this mythos that did not originate in other
    cultures.

        "We can only conclude that the death ritual of the Christian creed
    was framed in a pagan environment and embodies some of the most
    widespread ideas of Pagan religion. the two aspects in which the
    historic Christ is typically presented to his worshipers, those of his
    infancy and death, are typically Pagan." _Pagan_Christs_ by J.M
    Roberts, page 52.

        What about the man Jesus then? Was he divine? Did he exist? Is/was
    he the Savior?

        Most, if not all, of the Christian Belief System is Pagan in
    origin.  It is indeed hard to force oneself to believe that Jesus is
    the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God when such titles were readily
    copied from Pagan doctrine. Perhaps the only item not borrowed from
    Pagan sources was the Messiah concept. That, of course, was taken from
    the Jewish hysteria of the time. In the siege of Jerusalem in 72 C.E.
    there were some 18 Messiahs inside Jerusalem alone. Neither the God man
    Jesus nor the self proclaimed militant messiahs saved Jerusalem. Such
    was the measure of hysterical superstition upon the nation of Israel.

        "There is not a conception associated with Christ that is not
    common to some or all of the Savior cults of antiquity. The title
    Savior was given in Judaism to Yahweh; among the Greeks to Zeus,
    Heilos, Artemis, Dionysus, Hercales, the Dioscurui, Ceybele and
    Aesculapius. It is the essential conception of Osiris. So, too, Osiris
    taketh away sin, is the judge of the dead and of the last judgment.
    Dionysus, the Lord of the UnderWorld and primarily a god of feasting
    ('the Son of Man commeth eating and drinking'), comes to be conceived
    as the Soul of the World and the inspirer of chastity and self
    purification. [J. M. Robertson may be referring to Attis here.] From the
    Mysteries of Dionysus and Isis comes the proclamation of the easy
    'yoke'. Christ not only works the Dionysiac miracle, but calls himself
    the 'true vine.'"

        "Like Christ, and like Adonis and Attis, Osiris and Dionysus also
    suffer and die and rise again. To become one with them is the mystical
    passion of their worshippers. They are all alike in that their
    mysteries give immortality. From Mithraism Christ takes the symbolic
    keys of heaven and hell and assumes the function of the virgin-born
    Saoshyant, the destroyer of the Evil One. Like Mithra, Merodach, and
    the Egyptian Khousu, he is the Mediator; like Khousu, Horus and
    Merodach, he is one of a trinity, like Horus he is grouped with a
    Divine Mother; like Khousu he is joined to the Logos; and like Merodach
    he is associated with the Holy Spirit, one of whose symbols is fire."

        "In fundamentals, therefore, Christism is but paganism reshaped. It
    is only the economic and doctrinal evolution of the system--the first
    determined by Jewish practice and Roman environment, the second by Greek
    thought--that constitutes new phenomena in religious history." _Pagan_
    _Christs_ by J.M. Robertson pages 52,53

        No religion develops in a vacuum. All religions are influenced not
    only by it's predecessors but by the contemporaries of the time also.
    Such is the nature of Christism yesterday and today.

        Now about Jesus the man, did he exist? I think not. All the
    teaching of Jesus can be attributed to other sources and grafted over
    the Gospel myth. Nothing he said was substantially different in any way
    from previous sayings. Jesus was not a man but a contrived myth.

        "The Christian myth grew by absorbing details from pagan cults. The
    birth story is similar to many nativity myths in the pagan world. The
    Christ had to have a Virgin for a mother. Like the image of the
    child-god in the cult of Dionysus, he was pictured in swaddling clothes
    in a basket manger. He was born in a stable like Horus--the stable
    temple of the Virgin Goddess, Isis, Queen of Heaven. Again , like
    Dionysus, he turned water into wine, like Aesculapius, he raised men
    from the dead and gave sight to the blind; and like Attis and Adonis,
    he is mourned and rejoiced over by women. His resurrection took place,
    like that of Mithra, from a rock tomb."

        The man Jesus did not exist. There are however sources that speak
    of others seeing him. These were secondhand sources. No direct
    observations were made. At one time or another we have all had a vision
    of Deity in our minds. Such is the sight of Jesus, a mental image.

        What of the Gospels then? They are passion plays designed to be
    read or acted out in front of an audience. Passion plays were a common
    feature of pagan religion. Looking at the Gospels themselves one finds
    a chopply written, scene by scene, display of the life of the God man.
    Only the important aspects of his life are described. The minor events
    and influences of the life of Jesus are not recorded, which leaves one
    to think that the Gospels are indeed a play.

        "When we turn from the reputed teaching of Jesus to the story of
    his career, the presumption is that it has a factual basis is so
    slender as to be negligible. The Church found it so difficult to settle
    the date of its alleged founder's birth that the Christian era was made
    to begin some years before the year which chronologists latter inferred
    on the strength of other documents. The nativity was placed at the
    winter solstice, thus coinciding with the birthday of the Sun-god. And
    the date for the crucifiction was made to vary from year to year to
    conform to the astronomical principle which fixed the Jewish Passover.
    [The Passover is moon based, an already familiar pagan method of
    cyclic, monthly dating.] In between the birth and death of Jesus, there
    is an almost total absence of information except about the brief period
    of his ministry. Of his life between the ages of twelve and thirty we
    know nothing. There are not even any myths. It is impossible to
    establish with any accuracy the duration of the ministry from the
    Gospels. According to the tradition it lasted one year, which suggests
    that it was either based on the formula 'the acceptable year of the
    Lord', or on the myth of the Sun-god." _Pagan_Christs_ by J.M.
    Robertson, page 68

