PASS THE TISSUE

By J.P. Holding

Having now spent well over a year collecting arguments on the subject of alleged (www.tektonics.org/tekton_04_02_04.html) pagan copycat Christs, with opponents ranging from the sort who also think aliens are talking to us to skeptics who prefer any explanation, even Christ surviving the crucifixion, to the Resurrection, I have noted certain patterns and tactics repeated time and time again. One of these, most germane to this issue of Osiris, is the tactic of collapsing down meanings, and thereafter sometimes explaining away differences as a matter of evolution.

The classic example of this here is Till's desire to describe what happened to Osiris as "bodily resurrection." Is that a suitable description? Perhaps it is for those wishing to obfuscate, or for those of popular mindset with a limited vocabulary. Describing both what happened to Osiris and what happened to Jesus (or to certain persons in the OT, as less educated skeptics like Till and Dennis McKinsey are prone to do) as "bodily resurrection" is incomplete. Take it further. Assuming that it is valid to use the same phrase for both, we may say that Osiris experienced "bodily resurrection" as in, "a deity whose body could never compose because it was impervious to change; whose body was ripped asunder and then pieced back together like a Lego set and came to life again because it was the nature of his unchangeable body to be able to do so." Jesus experienced "bodily resurrection" as in, "a hypostasis of a deity who incarnated in an otherwise typical human body that could and did compose; whose incarnated body was killed, started the process of decomposition, which was not only reversed but resulted in a body of a glorified, superhuman nature." These descriptions are based upon data from (www.tektonics.org/osy.html) Egyptian and (www. tektonicsorg/physrez.html) Jewish contemporary literature (the latter link showing that arguments for a "spiritual/ethereal resurrection" are grossly in error). Bodily resurrection? Using that phrase for both processes is like using the word "automobile" to describe both a Yugo and a Ferrari and claiming that there is little or no difference between them -- or describing both the religion of Osiris and that of Jesus (or of Mithra, etc) as "personal salvation" religions. To say further that there would have been no distinction seen by the ancients between the various processes (merely because the range of vocabulary used to describe such things in brief was limited!) is to make the very same mistake. Big Brother would be proud of such semantic simple-mindedness.

So as it happens, even if Till, or Acharya S, or whomever, tries to collapse both of these (or what happened to Dionysus, or Zalmoxis, or Attis, or whomever) down into the category of "bodily resurrection," it is a fallacious tactic because it uses an incomplete description to draw a similarity. This leads to a second pattern I have observed. A tactic of the mythicists (more pronounced with an Acharya S than with a Till, but still part of the package) is to simply hold up the parallels side by side, insert the implied gasp, and declare that theivery occurred. Really? How so? Does Till envision the apostles having picked up a copy of the 521 BC Book of the Breaths of Life or the Egyptian Book of the Dead at the local Barnes and Noble? Does he suppose they read or heard of these works, and made some tweaks for a suitable Jesus myth? When did they do this? Before the crucifixion? After? More intelligent proponents of this theory admit that such answers are not possible to give -- their answer we will comment upon briefly below.

From there it becomes a matter of how the differences outlined above are to be explained. Some copycat mythicists resort to the gap-plugging explanation: The disciples read or heard of Osiris and changed the story to fit Jewish sensibilities. Well, if that is the case, why not cut out the middleman and just say that the disciples applied a known Jewish motif (bodily resurrection of the sort described above) to the deceased Jesus, claiming it had happened to him? Why do we need Osiris at all, or Attis, or any of these others?

This raises a related point. Hard-core mythicists like Acharya find dying and rising figures under every rock. Some of these are false leads (Beddru of Japan); some clearly postdate Christianity (Mithra's death, if there was one at all); some are way out in left field (Quetzalcoatl!). So did Christians copy all of these? Did any of these guys copy each other? The critic may reply that demanding such answers is absurd. I agree. And it is just as absurd to state categorically that Christianity copied any of these other faiths.

Other critics, of a more sophisticated nature than the Acharya or Till crowd, essentially agree with these last two points. They say that Christianity was not cobbled together via direct borrowing, but was composed, as were other such beliefs, out of the compost of a general philosophical tenor of the era that was "in the air." There is a certain wisdom is this. All of these faiths proposed to address problems common to all men (What happens after death [if anything]? What is/are God/gods like [if there are any]?) We should not be surprised to find many of them proposing solutions that take similar steps, but this is more because there are certain constraints on what would be regarded as a reasonable solution to these problems. A deity, whether real or imagined, would be expected to be able to defeat death -- somehow. And that deity inevitably would do something for the sake of men to show their power over death and encourage men to follow them. The solution to, "What happens when we die?" admits only a certain range of general answers. (1. There is either nothing, or something; 2. The something is either good or bad; 3. We are either helpless to get there, or we need to do something about it.) The philosophical tenor of the era is indeed relevant, but it is a genetic fallacy to suggest that it adds proof to a claim of fabrication. A real God would be expected to solve real problems with real solutions. The real solution would be grounded in human action or response. That's really as far as the parallels can be taken, and they are meaningless.

James Patrick Holding - Tektonics Apologetics Ministries   http://www.tektonics.org/

SEE ALSO additional comments by J.P. Holding on this issue at:  http://www.tektonics.org/tillosy.html

END                    Posted: 11/19/02