Fact and myth
A comment on my latest posting reflects misunderstandings so common among Christians that I address it here.
That Jesus lived in Palestine two thousand years ago is accepted as history. That God is a male individual, a father who had a son without the involvement of any female, is myth. It is an imaginative story with inspirational power, not factual history.
Facts are right or wrong; religious myths are symbolic. They must not be confused either with facts or with “myth” in the popular understanding of a worthless, mistaken belief.
A careful reading of God Is Not Three Guys in the Sky should help to clarify these distinctions. Please read the book carefully to understand why it is not an insult to say the Christian story is myth. Understanding our own myth as myth will, I hope, facilitate abandonment of our exclusive claims and promote harmony between religions.
With regard to pagan resemblance to and influence on Christian belief, the factual evidence for this is too abundant to summarize in a few paragraphs.
Jeanette
That Jesus lived in Palestine two thousand years ago is accepted as history. That God is a male individual, a father who had a son without the involvement of any female, is myth. It is an imaginative story with inspirational power, not factual history.
Facts are right or wrong; religious myths are symbolic. They must not be confused either with facts or with “myth” in the popular understanding of a worthless, mistaken belief.
A careful reading of God Is Not Three Guys in the Sky should help to clarify these distinctions. Please read the book carefully to understand why it is not an insult to say the Christian story is myth. Understanding our own myth as myth will, I hope, facilitate abandonment of our exclusive claims and promote harmony between religions.
With regard to pagan resemblance to and influence on Christian belief, the factual evidence for this is too abundant to summarize in a few paragraphs.
Jeanette
Comments
We can summarize the connection between paganism and Christianity as far as the mass is concerned. There is abundant evidence that the mass descended from the Last Supper and Jewish Synogogue worship. Any resemblance to pagan ritual is what helped attract Hellenistic pagans to Christianity. So resemblance? Yes. But influence? I don't think so.
"if it is not myth,. . ." Apparently the difficulty comes in distinguishing the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith. The latter is RELIGIOUS myth.
Jeanette
I refer Theoguy to one Christian reseacher (there are dozens)--Hugo Rahner, Greek Myths and Christian Mystery. New York: Harper and Row, 1963.
Jeanette
Once again, I say that the mass basically descended to us from the Last Supper and Jewish Synogogue worship. I don't know why you won't admit that. Jewish converts to Catholicism often point out that the mass is very Jewish.
I did make a mistake referring you to Rahner’s book. I might have known you would seize on Rahner’s denial of the implications evinced by his own information. The statement you quote shows his discomfort with the facts he presents.
Writing more than forty years ago, Rahner was still enveloped by the Christian habit of claiming exclusive truth. Fortunately, scholarship has advanced beyond that, but this is a well-kept secret because of media focus on the Christian right. I hastily referenced Rahner, not taking the time to go back to research I did decades ago. And I won’t take the time now. Interested readers can research Hellenism and Mystery religions.
Again I quote myself (p. 147, God Is Not Three Guys): “A legitimate debate concerns to what extent Christianity copied pagan beliefs or whether it merely took form in the same spiritual matrix of the time.”
Jeanette