Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?

Quite the powerhouse response. Suppose the Bible was translated from Hebrew, and what the deity said according to what I was raised with is the spirit refered to itself as 'I Am'. Or is that incorrect as well.

Dallas

Sorry Dallas but they stole everything from everyone else. hell they even admit stealing from the Jews, but they say "God" told them to.

Flood? Giglamesh, Greeks/Romans.
Son of God? Hell in Greek/Roman everyone was the bastard son of a god, mainly Zues, he was quite the player. Also in the old days there was a plague of Messiahs, many of them recorded by real people in real historical documents, unlike the bible.
Creation? The Jews, same with just about everything else in the OT.
Holidays/Traditions? Witches and Druids.

Nothing is original, all stolen.

Here is one.....

One of the most important Romans historians is Tacitus. In 115 A.D. he recorded Nero's persecution of the Christians, in the process of which he wrote the following:

Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, . . . but even in Rome.[3]


LINK

im too tired to contribute right now, but the original post is full of disinformation... and i can sit here and give 100 differences between me and my mother, but that doesnt mean she didnt give birth to me, we resemble eachother..


did u ever really sit back and look at the heaven and hell stories? hell sounds like a bad spooky bedtime story to get kids to behave....


By the logic of the Bible, Ghandi is burning in hell forever right now

[edit on 16-8-2005 by Trueminatti]

Originally posted by edsinger
I have seen multiple comments from unbelievers about this very subject so I did a little digging and came up with a really good article, its a long read but very informing nonetheless.

may i ask who you are calling unbelievers ? do you realise who you sound like ?
let me tell you ...... like one of these radical imams calling up for Jihad against the "unbelievers" around the world .

I'd like to remind you that most of humanity's religions have been around since quite longer than christianity and that you have NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to use such insulting expressions to describe people of a different faith than yours . This is an intolerable and flagrant lack of respect . This is exactly the type of talk discrediting the whole christian world

quote from Byrd///

Only Jesus/God cursed humans in the first place, which is why he then had to sacrifice himself to "save" them.

No, I dont agree with you and neither do the early Church Fathers.

God did not CURSE Adam and Eve , BUT Adam and Eve brought the CURSE upon themselves because of Disobedience , they broke the one Commandement of God....All changed after the fall of Adam and Eve....because God intended all good for all upon the earth....For He made all things Good
eg
"And God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good/

Genesis, chaps. 1:1-31; 2:1-3.

God commanded man: "of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen 2:16-17).

3. How God Created the First People.

Why Did the Lord God Permit the First Man to Fall into Sin?

Almighty God, without a doubt, could have prevented the fall of the first people, but He did not wish to stifle their freedom, because it is not in His nature to distort His own image in man.
The image and likeness of God is expressed in the free will of man.rof. Nesmeloff explains this matter very well: "Because it is not clear and is even completely inconceivable for many people to understand why a mechanical salvation is impossible, we should examine this impossibility more closely.
To save the first people by preserving the conditions in which they lived before the fall was impossible because their fall was such that they showed themselves to be not only mortal, but also to be criminal.

here


God did not have to Sacrifice Himself.....He did this out of LOVE ....For mankind.
When SIN(ltererally means to miss the mark)entered into the World,then all changed....and in order for things to go back as they were before the Fall, man needed to be redeemed by the sacrifice of the Son of God.....God became man because it was MAN that caused SIN to enter.
eg///
"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Romans 5:12).
DEATH was the result of SIN entering the world.

"The seed of the woman shall crush thy head, and thou shalt strike at his heel" (Cf. Gen 3:15), that is, from woman there will come forth an offspring — the Saviour of the world, Who will be born of a virgin, will conquer the Devil and save man, but for this, He Himself must suffer.
This promise of God concerning the coming of the Saviour was received by men with faith and joy, because it gave them great consolation. In order that men would not forget this promise of God, God taught them to offer sacrifices. For this He commanded them to sacrifice a bull, a lamb or a goat, and to burn them with prayer for the forgiveness of sins and with faith in the future Saviour. Such a sacrifice was a prefiguration of the Saviour, Who had to suffer and pour out His blood for our sins, that is, by His all pure blood to wash our souls from sin and make them clean, holy and once more worthy of Paradise.

Here, in Paradise, the first offering for sin was offered; God made Adam and Eve coats of animal skins and clothed them.

6. The Results of the Fall into Sin

God seeing that Adam and Eve broke the Law.....quote///God, in His compassion, began to call them to repentance, that is, for men to realize their sin, admit it before the Lord, and ask for forgiveness.
And today certain people will not admit their wrongdoing and therefore SIN rules and makes one become further away from God.....because SIN means to miss the mark and that is what the First people did....they missed the mark.

The disruption of human nature by ancestral sin — the disruption of soul and spirit in man, which now has an attraction to the sensual, is clearly expressed in the words of the Apostle Paul,
"For the good that I would do, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me" (Rom. 7:19-20).
Man constantly suffers from "pangs of conscience" when realizing his sinfulness, his criminality. In other words, it is impossible for man, by his own powers, without the interference or help of God, to restore his damaged and disrupted nature.
Therefore, it was necessary for God Himself to come down and dwell upon the earth.
The incarnation of the Son of God was necessary for the restoration of the fallen and corrupted nature of man, to save man from damnation and eternal death.

Further info below/

7. Discussion of the Fall into Sin.


IX
helen

Originally posted by Byrd

Jesus died once and for all

Uhm, no. He died and was resurrected, remember? Like a lot of other gods. Nanahuatzin, Osiris (who didn't die yearly... he stayed dead and who has a lot of parallels with Jesus). And there's others that I'm too tired to look up, but they would include Polynesian and Oriental traditions. In non-Middle Eastern based religions, a number of gods were sacrificed (sometimes willingly) by other gods to make the world/humans/etc.

I think ed meant to say "Jesus died once for all" cause that's what it says in the Bible. It means that Jesus came to die once on the cross for all of mankind.

Good work on posting that article ed. I posted the link to it in another thread but it was ignored. By the way, for more answers on this issue and any issue surrounding Jesus I highly recommend The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. Supposedly the author is or was real big over there in the US. It's a great read especially for Christians who aren't too prepared in cases of apologetics or even for skeptics.

[edit on 16/8/05 by D]

Originally posted by edsinger

Originally posted by Al Davison What?! What other people?! This was supposed to be a full accounting of all the people who had ever been on earth - descended from Adam and Eve!.

It was the lineage of the chosen ones, so that Christ birth line would be preserved.


I guess Gen 6 "and also afterward" comes to mind.

My point was simply that if you believe that the bible holds an accurate and full accounting of how man came to be on this earth, then how can you explain these "other peoples" and/or "other cultures"?

Are you saying that the bible stories just left out the folks who weren't of this certain lineage?

BTW - this is a sincere question; it's not intended to be an attack. I'd really like to know.

[edit on 16-8-2005 by Al Davison]

There are a heck of a lot of great threads on this subject. Please concentrate on one of these already existant threads, there isn't much sense in having this much duplication and the evidence presented here (for both sides) has been hashed over quite a bit.

Interesting Information on Pagan Origins
Pagan Christianity
Subliminal Symbols
The 13th Apostle
Did Jesus Exist
The Paganism of Christianity
Mithras Christ?
Jesus/Horus/Krshna
Why 12-25th?

This is an intersting thread that shows the same logic applied to Islam. People seem more accepting of the same logic (and weaker evidence) when it makes Islam a devil-religion/pagan fraud.


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