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Pagan godmen: How to collapse terms for illicit parallels
Pagan Christs

The men of latter times accepted this. . . that there are too many gullible neophytes out there spreading disinformation.
[J. P. Holding, Tekton Apologetics, 2004]

Was Jesus new?  Was Jesus unique?  Let's talk about Pikachu's showcase for poor research and contrivances: His treatment of the "pagan godmen".

Who doesn't have a godman? You could say, "Nobody, that's who" - provided you define the term so broadly that it has absolutely no meaning left and could be applied even down to the clerk named Ahmed at the 7-11 who thinks he's a space alien.
Look, in Christianity, Jesus as God and man has a specific meaning. He is connected specifically to the Jewish deity YHWH as an incarnation of a
hypostasis. Despite what Pikachu will tell you, there's nothing like this anywhere else. It's hard to say in some cases where he gets his facts. In Africa he appeals to Gamab, Enkai, Juok, but I can't find a single reference to them becoming "men" and if they did, what it was all about. His appeal to Mexico having Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli smells misplaced: Any idea of incarnation is likely influenced by Christian missions. His appeal to what American Indians had is especially comical and tells me enough about how bad Pikachu is at doing research. Adlivun is not even a god; it is a frozen Inuit version of hell! Hahgwehdiyu is an actual deity, but I find no indication yet of any incarnation. Kananeski-anayehi is a goddess...who is a spider who took a basket and some sticky thread to bring fire up to the Earth from the Underworld. Is a god-spider a godman? Hmm. I find no indication yet that the Hottentots own Haiuri ever became a man. The stone age Australians had Djanggawul, all right -- this was the collective name of two sisters and a brother deity; they did come to earth to do some creative work, but to call this an "incarnation" seems premature: by nature for a "real" incarnation, the god needs to be taking a form not natural to itself, and that is not clearly the case here. Baiame came down to teach humans things like fishing and weather forecasting; and Daramulum is a father deity I can find no hint of being incarnated. The Norse Balder was no parallel and probably influenced by Christianity; Asgard was not a godman but the Norse "heaven"! (Does Pikachu even check these things??) Gefion apparently did come to earth: She's renowned for dressing up as a beggar, disguising her four giant sons as oxen and winning a ploughing contest. Hati is apparently a wolf (I mean, a godwolf?). And so on. Do I really need to say more? Pikachu's "godman" list has some serious problems with it; but like most charlatans, he hopes you won't check things out to see how he's equivocating.

Ancient Pagan Godmen
"It get's better."   Not only does Pikachu have basic problems knowing where to put an apostrophe (as in this last quote), he has a short list of Ancient Pagan Gods like Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, Mithra" who he says were "subordinate Gods, son's of [sic] the great universal God, miraculously conceived, born of a mortal woman, living for a while on Earth rather than in Heaven. But as I know from doing hard research on each of these (see here), these are all either false claims, post-Christian, or cases of fudging terms into meaninglessness. That's the only way you'll turn Jesus into a "pagan godman": by massaging the evidence in some cases and ignoring it in others. 

Wow. Can you believe that there are still morons who promote this stuff?

Pikachu covers his butt by explaining that no, he doesn't think that when Paul and Mark and John sat down to write about Jesus, they had the Revised Standard Edition of The Gospel of the Pagan Gods open on the table. That he says is silly, though being silly didn't stop him from posting what arguments he did manage to offer.

Rather, Pikachu opts for a sort of Jungian "in their heads" approach -- a conveniently unfalsifiable thesis, in all practical terms worthles, which says that Mark et al. had "general notions of divinity, and cosmology and humanity," which they then massaged into something that worked the way they wanted it, "new arrangements of old ideas". How nice. And thus we could declare every President a myth, one begun by historians that had "general notions of poilitics, leadership, and foreign policy." They knew how Presidents worked. And when they wrote about Theodore Roosevelt, they made sure he worked like a President -- which I do not doubt for a minute is exactly what they believed He was. See how easy it is?

So when Pikachu tells you Jesus wasn't the first Son of God who suffered, died, and was reborn, and so on, you'd better check and make sure all your silverware is still there. Vague generalities are his class; and it's a sad class indeed.

His Pagan Christs section lists a few of his candidates. Despite his claim, not all predated Jesus; some did not at all, and some did not in their forms that was most like Jesus. You'll see they were each different from Jesus, and that Pikachu's reference to a "godmen's club" is about as meaningful as speaking of a "black man's club" to include anybody from Martin Luther King to Louis Farrakhan. But stay tuned for the biggest news of all -- the debunking of his Dionysus on the cross picture, taken from Freke and Gandy. It's on its way.

 

Is this just Pikachu talking? Yes. It's also him wrenching quotes into saying something they don't. For example:

Jesus, may have been said by the Pagan Celsus to have had a divine origin like the Gods of the Greek myths. The problem with that is that 1) Celsus did believe Jesus lived as a man; 2) what Celsus meant was that pagans like him were willing to add Jesus to the pagan pantheon -- which in other words, would be a strong demotion from what was asserted about him by himself and by Christians. But this quote anyway says zero about Jesus' origin being like that of the Greek gods>>

[T]his Jew of Celsus, as if he were a Greek who loved learning, and were well instructed in Greek literature, continues: "The old mythological fables, which attributed a divine origin to Perseus, and Amphion, and AEacus, and Minos, were not believed by us.

And in this one where Celsus says "the Greek Gods were better" we actually have an admission that he was NOT like them (and hence not a parallel) >>

Nevertheless, that they might not appear unworthy of credit, they represented the deeds of these personages as great and wonderful, and truly beyond the power of man; but what hast thou [Jesus] done that is noble or wonderful either in deed or in word? Thou hast made no manifestation to us, although they challenged you in the temple to exhibit some unmistakable sign that you were the Son of God."
[Origen, Against Celsus, 1.67 (3d century AD) ]

Don't believe me, I need therapy.

Pikachu's abuse of what is said by the "Christian Father Origin" [sic] speaks for itself. He does not "agree [that] Jesus and the Pagan Gods had a similar divine origin" since Celsus never said that in the first place. This is nothing but a grading of deeds:

In reply to which we have to say Let the Greeks show to us, among those who have been enumerated, any one whose deeds have been marked by a utility and splendor extending to after generations, and which have been so great as to produce a belief in the fables which represented them as of divine descent. But these Greeks can show us nothing regarding those men of whom they speak, which is even inferior by a great degree to what Jesus did; unless they take us back to their fables and histories, wishing us to believe them without any reasonable grounds, and to discredit the Gospel accounts even after the clearest evidence."

[Origen, Against Celsus, 1.67 (3d century AD) ]

Don't believe me, I'm a hillbilly.

The dying, non-resurrected godmen. The biggest problem with appeals to "myths of the resurrected godmen" is that none of them actually were "resurrected". The term has a very specific meaning in Jewish thought -- only Jesus fits this; popular use of the word "resurrection" to mean anything from Jesus to Michael Jackson in Thriller has lost this specifity.

Making matters worse for mythicist proponents is that the premier promotor of this idea, Sir James George Frazer, is severely outdated and has been substantially discredited by later specialists who question his theories.

 

Despite Pikachu, it isn't hand waving archeologist guesswork that is the problem. It is hand waving terminological and philosophical equivocation that is the problem. 

Plutarch's details of religions already ancient in his time doesn't tell us a thing in Pikachu's favor>>

 

 

In  Athens the women fast...and the Boeotians...name that festival the Festival of Sorrow, since Demeter is in sorrow because of her daughter's decent into Pluto's realm.  This month, in the season of the Pleiades, is the month of seeding....

The Phrygians, believing that the god is asleep in the winter and awake in the summer, sing lullabies for him in the winter and in the summer chants to arouse him, after the manner of Bacchic [ aka Dionysus'] worshipers.

The Paphlagonians assert that in the winter he is bound fast and imprisoned, but that in the spring he bestirs himself and sets himself free again. [Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 378]

Come on. Jesus is never connected with agriculture; he did not descend into hell (despite later beliefs); his death and resurrection were not repeated yearly with the ag cycles...just who does Pikachu think he is fooling here?

Don't believe me, believe the ancients themselves.

It is true that the ancient Greeks and Romans inherited and adapted Gods from the archaic Middle East, carrying their myths past the cycle-of-nature stage. But we'll see in the profiles that every one Pikachu chooses has serious flaws as a parallel: Too late to influence Jesus; too dissimilar; or justplain wrong.

You should understand, there's a lot of stuff about the godmen we DO know -- and appeals to Constantine (that old baddie) suppressing or destroying information are just an excuse that is used by mythicists when the data doesn't cooperate. It becomes a conveniently unfalsifiable thesis which creates convoluted explanations for why the data isn't cooperative.

Amazing, that people still believe this stuff, huh?

 

But wait! There's even less!   Sacraments and ideas too are abused by Pikachu.
Myths? Missed.
Jesus' story is universal in some ways.  Jesus' story is unique in others.  He was the first Son born to a virgin woman whose embryo was created by divine fiat.  He wasn't the first godman to heal the sick and raise the dead; but show me a god who could not effect sickness and you'll have news indeed. He was the first to turn water into wine -- Dionysus was a latecomer on that.   He was the first godman to die by crucifixion for expiation of sin and the first and only to be resurrected (in the Jewish fashion). He was not the first to ascend into heaven; yet where else would a divine man go?   The stories about Jesus -- his myths -- were sometimes new.  The stories about Jesus that were not new -- were universals. 

That's part of what Pikachu's Pagan Christs section is about: Abusing the evidence.

Sacraments and ideas.
There's more to Christianity than stories about Jesus' life.  There are sacraments like baptism and the eucharist.  There are theologies about sin and salvation.  And, guess what, the Pagan godmen had superficially similar and meaningfully unrelated practices before Christ, while Jews had much closer practices and sacraments. 

That's also what Pikachu's Pagan Christs section is about: Poor scholarship..  Go nuts, indeed.

 
 

The next time you're with Lurch
ask yourself:"What about what I'm hearing was new and unique with Christianity, and what was already part of other religions in a culture where over and over again new religions were built with old parts? Turns out it's all bunk. Pikachu is a neophyte using outdated scholarship, and ignoring better scholarship."Next time you're in church...

When they get to the part about one God, and his Son who died for the salvation of mankind, was resurrected, ascended into Heaven, remember Dionysus, Isis and Osiris, Mithras, Eleusis, the ancient mystery religions, Attis, Adonis, Zoraster, and the rest were nothing like this, unless you equivocate so hard that you make Ahmed down at 7-11 into a pagan godman.

You'll know you're hearing about stuff that has been peddled by neophytes and contrivers like Kersey Graves for tens of years -- in a culture where any schlep like Pikachu can crack open a book or two and think he's an instant expert.

Uhhhhhhh!