Talk:Jesus in comparative mythology

Source Vetting and the Challenges of Writing an Article on a Living Religion

Right now this article does its damnedest to portray Christianity as an exceptional religion that somehow appeared in a vacuum, exactly followed it scriptural narrative, and had no influence from the world around it. It stands as an example of how writing about Christianity in the west presents unique challenges: How many of these "scholarly sources" are in fact defenses of the religion—in this case Christianity—that the author holds? How many of these sources are from Christian institutions? How many of these sources are actually from people working in relevant fields, such as folkloristics, rather than theology and religious studies? This is a real issue with this article as well as Christ myth theory, another minefield of an article. Right now this article is a total mess. :bloodofox: (talk) 20:12, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

You are bang on the money :bloodofox:! This article is a joke. Every single opening paragraph ends with a statement that "most historians disagree ..." or similar. The citations are rubbish; they state things like "surely everyone agrees ...", while others are just the opinion of a single person (e.g. Richard Carrier), who was obviously included purely on the grounds that he subscribes to the views presented in the article. The reasoning being that if Richard even agrees, then it must be true! Disaster.

Why do these editors insist on helping the critics of Wikipedia. If we cannot write (or let others write) objectively about things we don't necessarily agree with, then WP will never be taken seriously.

There should be one "Critics" section at the bottom of this article in which objections to the Jesus Myth theory could be placed, with their citations properly reviewed! Imagine if every WP article was like this one, and you were trying to read about the moon landing for example, and were constantly interrupted with advertising from critics. HappyGod (talk) 05:48, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree with the above comments. This is the single worst article I've read on Wikipedia. No attempt is made at all to adopt a neutral point of view. It's nonsensical. Liamcalling (talk) 01:08, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Not to get too echo-ey here, but have to agree with the above. I was curious about the subject, came here, and am left feeling like I need to look elsewhere to get any sort of useful academic view on the subject. 92.238.177.129 (talk) 10:55, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Close Paraphrasing/Identical content

The passage about Porters stance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ_in_comparative_mythology#Ancient_Egypt) is identical to one on the Gerald Massey Article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Massey#Criticism). This may constitute Close Paraphrasing as described in the wikipedia guidelines, although it is not paraphrased, but more or less identical. As one cannot edit this article, maybe an admin can look over this issue. (79.255.192.47 (talk) 13:01, 24 September 2015 (UTC))

Requested move 18 December 2015

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move per request. In a descriptive title like this one, we normally use the parent article's title, unless it would be confusing in context. Here, it is difficult to even imagine a scenario where a person would find Jesus to be ambiguous without Christ appended.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 19:21, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

---

Jesus Christ in comparative mythology → Jesus in comparative mythology – I would've thought this would be sufficiently uncontroversial to do it myself, but a move to this title was reverted a few years ago, referring to talk page discussion. There hasn't been an RM, though some discussion in Archive 1 shows the rationale for "Christ" being that the article discusses Jesus as Messiah. But so do many Jesus articles. I don't think that's a good reason to deviate from the parent article, Jesus, or WP:CONCISE. --BDD (talk) 18:53, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

• Support this move. The main article is Jesus and it is the primary topic for than name. The disambiguation term "Jesus Christ" is unnecessary. What other Jesus is relevant to comparative mythology? Dimadick (talk) 17:08, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
• Support. Obvious, really. StAnselm (talk) 17:50, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
• Support per WP:CONPRIME. Subtopics follow the title format of their parent topics. bd2412 T 15:04, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Nomination for Review of Neutrality

Just an anonymous reader browsing, but I agree with the earlier talk. Worst bias I have personally ever seen on Wikipedia. There is a noticeable lack of inclusion of the mythology of a variety of religions in addition to previously noted issues. If this is an article attempting to compare the mythological life of christ to the lives of other god/martyr figures throughout history, a broader series of topics than the 6 most cherrypicked and disputable instances might be a good idea. Fully agreee with below talk, this article reads like scholars nearly universally agree christ was unique and christianity didn't borrow any themes from his life from other places. That's simply not factual in any way whatsoever. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.37.92.31 (talk) 05:06, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

The examples described in this article are the ones that are most commonly cited by supporters of the Christ Myth theory, which has been universally rejected by mainstream scholarship. Real scholars have examined stories about Jesus in the context of comparative mythology, but they agree on several factors:

1. Behind all the mythological elaborations, Jesus was a real historical figure, which means that the basic details of his life are historical, not mythological (i.e. he really did come from Nazareth, he really was baptized by John the Baptist, he really was crucified under the orders of Pontius Pilate, and so on).
2. Early Christians drew on Jewish mythology in their creation of new stories about Jesus, not on pagan myths. For example, the reason why Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew gives his first sermon on a mountain, but, in the Gospel of Luke, he gives it on a plain, is because the Gospel of Matthew is intentionally trying to portray Jesus as a "new Moses" and, according to the Book of Exodus, Moses received the Ten Commandments atop Mount Sinai. The flight into Egypt from the Gospel of Matthew and subsequent return to Judaea is clearly modeled on the story of the Exodus. Likewise, the story of the Annunciation from the Gospel of Luke is based on the account in the Book of Judges where the Angel of the Lord tells Samson's mother about the coming birth of her son, Samson.

If we want to improve this article, it should focus less on the whole "Christ Myth" conspiracy theory that Jesus was actually secretly a pagan god-man who was adapted by early Christians (an idea which has been rejected by scholars) and instead focus on how early Christians modeled some of their stories about Jesus on stories found in the Old Testament. --Katolophyromai (talk) 10:53, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

This is a notice to let everyone know that I am planning on probably significantly revising much of this article and expanding it. I do not know how soon this will be or how long it will take, because I am probably going to be much busier for the next month or so than I have been for the past few months, which means I will most likely have less time to spend editing here on Wikipedia. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:38, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Hello, Katolophyromai. I recommend rewriting this article from scratch. It's not worth your time now (or in the future) to deal with the many barbed problems that the current article presents and promotes. I also suggest that you look first and foremost to classicists and anthropologists of religion for information on this topic rather than, say, theologians. Comparisons between New Testament narratives surrounding Jesus and, say, Dionysus and Prometheus are not at all uncommon, and would be (and are) pretty obvious to a classical audience (or an audience trained in classical studies). Introductory texts in some current classical studies programs make the comparisons pretty clear as well.

For example, ignoring my bookshelf, a quick Google Books search returns scores scholars in classical studies mentioning strong correspondences between Jesus and Dionysus in peer-reviewed works published by university presses (just a quick example: "The correspondence of Christianity and mystery religions of antiquity are perhaps more startling than their differences. Orpheus and Christ share attributes in the early centuries of our era, Dionysus has most in common with the figure of Christ ... Indeed, the association of Christ with the vine frequently led to the use of the myths and attributes of Dionysus in early Christian iconography." (link)). After all, syncretism and diffusion are simply facts of human life.

Currently, Wikipedia is treating this as pretty fringe topic — largely a result of leaning on theologians rather than, say, classicists — and it shouldn't stay that way. We also need a topic discussing what influence this constant discourse has had since, say, the Enlightenment. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:31, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I've just pulled a section on divine birth. It seemed to be defending something but it didn't come out and say what it was: was the goal to highlight Jesus's birth from a sky god — Yahweh — and Mary, a mortal woman, as somehow incomparable to the union of Zeus and Semele that produced Dionysus? Of course, Dionysus narratives are frequently compared to Jesus narratives in classical studies, including narratives about their births and early lives. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:38, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

The section is not "defending" anything. It is talking about similarities and differences between Jesus and classical mythology. The story of the virgin birth of Jesus was invented independently by the authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (or the independent sources they relied upon) in order to fulfill the mistranslated Greek Septuagint version of Isaiah 7:14, which states that a "virgin" (parthenos) will conceive and give birth to a son. The story is rooted in Jewish tradition, not Greek mythology. Early Christians believed that Jesus was conceived without sexual intercourse, which is completely different from how demigods in classical mythology were typically conceived: as the result of a physical union between an anthropomorphic god and a mortal woman. I am planning to add an explanation of the story's Jewish background to the article, but I have not had time yet.

I do not know what your background or intentions are, but there is an enormous quantity of fringe material that has been written on this subject, mostly by untrained amateurs, based on extremely vague and often exaggerated similarities. I certainly will not deny that Christian perceptions of Jesus (especially in later times) were influenced by pagan mythology, but there are a lot of comparisons out there that simply are not valid and are not accepted by mainstream scholars. It will be necessary to provide rebuttals.

In reply to your earlier comment about not using "theologians" as sources, I will briefly comment that the word "theologian" is a highly specific term which fringe theorists have often misapplied as a pejorative to anyone who studies the New Testament, including - for completely inexplicable reasons - critical New Testament historians of the higher criticism variety, who have, ironically, been denigrated for over a century by evangelical Christian apologists as the emissaries of Satan sent to discredit the scriptures. I will be using classical scholars as sources in this article (I already have quite extensively), but, for the parts dealing with the life of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels I will be relying primarily on reputable New Testament scholars, who are, after all, the ones who have spent their lives studying this subject. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:18, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Oh, also, (This is really nitpicky, but it will bother me if I do not say it.) Yahweh was not a "sky god"; he was a national god, which is a kind of deity specific to the ancient Near East. Although Yahweh did eventually absorb some sky god aspects from the chief god El and the storm god Baal, these were always secondary to his primary role as the national protector of the people of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:27, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

First, the section I remove made not a single mention of Jesus. I ask for the courtesy of close attention to what I'm doing and saying. As I said, scholars frequently discuss the many shared similarities between narratives surrounding the lives of Dionysus and Jesus. After all, the New Testament is a byproduct of the classical world, and the circumstances of Dionysus's birth are so unique that the comparison between the two are obvious. A sky god impregnating a mortal woman and producing a demigod was hardly unknown in the classical world, the exact mechanisms in this particular narrative aside. There's plenty of scholarship pointing this out to draw from for this article.

And so follows my second point: I did not say that we should not cite theologians. I said we should be focused on classicists and I'm glad we agree on that point. However, I need to point out that the term theologian is in fact used in the academic world, and there's ultimately a big difference between a theologian and a classicist. This difference is amplified when a theologian is strongly affiliated with, say, an institution like Liberty University. We should be noting scholar backgrounds and identities wherever possible.

As anyone who has followed my work here for the past decade or so knows, I don't bother to discuss fringe sources unless I'm removing them or inserting material discussing them. This is why you'll note that I repeatedly mention classical studies and not someone on the internet :).

Regarding Yahweh — regardless of earlier strata, by this point the concept of Yahweh was long intermixed with El and other notable contemporaries, and thus the sky associations are pretty clearly pronounced. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:40, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

The paragraph you removed was the beginning of one of the new sections I am starting. I had not had a chance yet to fully develop it.

I did not say that "theologian" was not a real academic term; it is very much so. I was just saying that it has often been misapplied by people who are unaware of New Testament historical criticism, which is the most relevant field for much of the information in this article. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:49, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

My apologies for jumping the gun there, in that case. If you're developing paragraphs in a draft page, I'd be glad to help out where and when possible, by the way. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:55, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Sandmel

@Bloodofox: Sandmel's criticism of comparisons between Jesus and pagan figures is not at all fringe. I hope I do not offend you when I say that I am getting a distinct impression that you are very unfamiliar with New Testament scholarship. The fact is that it is generally agreed that pagan influence on Christianity comes only from the later strata of the religion, after it had become a predominantly Gentile religion largely detached from its original Jewish roots (a shift which happened in the late first century after the Synoptic Gospels were written). Thus, the gospels of Mark and Matthew are usually thought to be either totally free from pagan influence or, if there are pagan influences in them, they are not observable. Instead, the primary influence on them is Jewish tradition. The Gospel of Matthew in particular is known for its markedly Jewish character and it was at one point used by the Ebionites, an early sect of Judaizing Christians. The Gospel of Luke is a bit more of an open question, with some scholars arguing that, in this gospel, Jesus may be starting to show some features of a pagan divine-man; this is, of course, still disputed. The Gospel of John was definitely influenced by Platonism and it may have also been influenced to some extent by Greco-Roman paganism, though even this is still hotly disputed. The parallels between Dionysus and the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospel of John that you refer to are indeed a legitimate area of scholarly inquiry, but it is by no means widely accepted that the Gospel of John was influenced by Dionysus. (Indeed, many scholars have proposed equally credible explanations that the wine imagery in the gospel may simply be based on passages from the Old Testament.)

Furthermore, what Sandmel is actually criticizing is not the study of legitimate pagan influence on later Christianity, but rather the massive quantity of material that has been produced - primarily by a regrettable strand of remarkably shoddy scholarship in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as some more recent writings produced by amateurs - adducing wildly exaggerated parallels to Jesus based on even slightest superficial similarities (or even sometimes completely nonexistent ones). The "parallelomania" he describes has largely been expelled from mainstream scholarship, but it is still very common among supporters of the fringe Christ Myth theory, who often invent and exaggerate parallels far beyond reality. One representative example of this trend described by Maurice Casey is the notion propounded by some Christ Myth theorists that the word "Christ" is somehow derived from the Sanskrit name of the Hindu god Krishna, despite the fact that "Christ" is an ordinary Greek word meaning "anointed one" that existed long before Jesus and it already has a completely mundane etymology unrelated to Krishna. Another example is the interpretation of a story in which Krishna is killed by being shot through the heel as some kind of crucifixion. Even for the deities who may have legitimately influenced later Christian views on Jesus, there are still all kinds of wild speculations. For instance, there is credible reason to think that Egyptian portrayals of Isis nursing Horus may have influenced Christian depictions of the Virgin Mary nursing Jesus, but, aside from this (at least as far as I am currently aware), there is no evidence to support the idea that any of the other supposed parallels between them that have been propounded over the years thanks to the humorous ineptitude of Gerald Massey have any veracity behind them. --Katolophyromai (talk) 01:28, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Also, keep in mind this article is still very much a work in progress. Any issues you see in the current version may very well be ones that I am aware of and am planning to address in further revisions. --Katolophyromai (talk) 01:46, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

I'll sidestep what appears to be a personal attack and, again, ask that you look closely at what I've written. First, the section from the article reads as follows:

In a 1962 article, Samuel Sandmel, a Jewish rabbi and professor of Bible and Hellenistic literature at the Hebrew Union College, criticizes attempts to argue that the portrayal of Jesus in the gospels was directly influenced by pagan mythological figures, stating that such arguments are flawed and based solely on vague similarities.

This includes the Gospel of John. We then launch into a section discussing how scholars have identified strong parallels with preexisting narratives regarding Dionysus in the very same gospel. Sandmel is indeed the odd man out here. This stuff from Sandmel used to be in the lead of the article. I don't see why this obscure article from the 1960s is still so prominently positioned in the article.

In fact, I'd argue that a lot of the defenses against Christ-as-entirely-myth stuff needs to be sectioned off into its own article. This isn't what this article is about, and right now the article looks like more of an attack on that position than a straightforward discussion of narratives surrounding Jesus.

Third, the current structure of the article is confusing for the author and, I'd argue, wrong-headed. We need to be approaching narratives regarding Jesus in a chronological manner, from early non-biblical accounts, to biblical accounts, to medieval folklore, and into modern popular culture, tackling topics like attempts at modern era Christians to remove what they deem to be the "myth" versus "fact", full-throttle evangelical stuff, and pop culture stuff like Zeitgeist. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:31, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Once again, I apologize for my initial comment; you have done a fantastic job with all our Norse mythology articles and I was merely stating that the historical background of the New Testament does not seem to be your area of expertise. My plan from the very beginning has been to write this article primarily as a history of mythological developments and influences on Christian views of Jesus in chronological order with a section at the end about general parallels (i.e. similarities that are probably not the result of direct influence) at the end. My writing process is a bit disorganized, however, and I tend to write articles a few paragraphs at a time, adding material in as I go along. The current structure is a temporary stand-in until I compose more material to fill in the parts that are missing. I think that it will be necessary to refute the Christ Myth theory in some places, since that is what most people will jump to when they hear "Jesus in comparative mythology," but I will try to limit mention of it. (It is worth noting that the original title of this article was "Jesus as myth" and it was essentially a redundant fork of the article Christ Myth theory, which is why the previous revision of the article talked about the Christ Myth theory so much.) --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:13, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

(wandering in from Egypt) If I may interject something, Katolophyromai's characterization of NT scholarship seems to be correct, based on my very general understanding of it, but I'd like to point out a possible source that pushes back a little against the scholarly consensus: Iesus Deus (2014) by M. David Litwa. I've never gotten around to reading it, and not every connection between Jesus and paganism is "mythology" per se, but it does at least seem to address the nativity stories' resemblance to divine birth myths. And it's not a fringe book, having been reviewed by James Dunn and Larry Hurtado. Litwa's views may not be a significant enough minority viewpoint to include here—you'd have to know the field better than I do in order to say—but I thought it was worth mentioning. A. Parrot (talk) 03:07, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Heavy Reliance on Bart D. Ehrman

I'm noticing a very heavy reliance on works by Bart D. Ehrman, a theologian. This is particularly notable so far in our section on Mithras. Ehrman is by no means a specialist on the topic of Mithras and classical mystery cults, and I believe that we should be using superior sources than Ehrman's general audience-aimed book length argument for the historicity of Jesus (Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, notably published by HarperCollins's HarperOne imprint rather than an academic press).

There exists many, many peer-reviewed works by classicists on this topic and the general topic of mystery religions in the classical world and their influence on Christianity, and I see no evident reason to lean so strongly into Ehrman's book. Surely we can do a lot better. Additionally, when scholars interject opinions, we must be very careful about attributing those opinions to maintain neutrality. I've noticed a few incidents where that hasn't been the case so far in this article. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:17, 1 March 2018 (UTC)