Links between Christianity and paganism?

Hello i am doing a essay on Links between Christianity and paganism, as we all may know Christianity has many similarity lets call them with Egyptian and Greek god mythology.

Such as the story of promephius and jesus
Isis and Horus / Mary and Jesus
Zues, yahwe
sun disks on Egyptian gods heads / halos on Christan saints

Now the sources are all primary lets call them we can look at the pictures and make the outcomes ourselves.

My question to you all is have you found any books on this topic that really define and dicribe the similarity's.

I have been searching for some myself but nothing substantual has come up yet
And perhaps one off you may be able to give me some book names to read.

James Frazer's The Golden Bough and Manly P. Hall's Secret Teachings of All Ages are good places to start, although they are a bit dated at this point.

Edit: but since you wanted something that made direct comparisons -- The Jesus Mysteries?

[edit on 3-9-2008 by Eleleth]

There are alot of similarities between Christianity/jesus and the Roman cult of Mithra. And you wanna talk about pagan, how about cannibalising the body and blood of christ even if it is just with food. I had this book that was kind of old called Pagan Christs by JM Robertson. it was pretty interesting

Pagan Christs

and

The Non - Christian Cross

Look at the roots of Easter, Christmas and even Valentines day. These are Christian hijacks as I understand.

The cross, discussed in another forum, is an adopted symbol.

Im actually surprised that Halloween wasn't taken aswell.

[edit on 9/3/2008 by Good Wolf]

excellent reading thanks everyone for this will help me greatly.

I have found many links between Christianity and paganism, however most of my research has revolved around the paganism of Rome. For example the Roman god was Mithra who was rooted in Babylonian paganism, and this gods birthday was on December 25th, so this was a big connection for me. I started this direction in my studies when I found out that the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock refused to celebrate Christmas and Easter. It has been a real eye opener to say the least.
www.mythoughtsweb.com

Once upon a time I had a website saved with a comparison chart of the compared beliefs of paganism and Christianity, sadly my links were all lost by Firefox for no apparent reason and I don't know the name of the website anymore. The Religious Tolerance website has a few pages that may be helpful though:

Were elements of Jesus' life copied from other saviors/god-men/heroes?
and
Parallels between Christianity and ancient Pagan religions

At the bottom of the second link there is also a list of books for where they got there information, and at the bottom of the first there are a few other related pages that may be helpful.

Originally posted by syress
Hello i am doing a essay on Links between Christianity and paganism, as we all may know Christianity has many similarity lets call them with Egyptian and Greek god mythology.

Don't mean to sound offensive, but it appears you've gotten a lot of material third hand here. You need to go to the original sources.

Such as the story of promephius and jesus

That would be "Prometheus", and are you trying to tell us that like Prometheus, Jesus helped trick humans with a fake sacrifice to God and that as a result, God cast a heavy darkness on the land. And that Jesus felt sorry for the humans who had to live in a dark world all the time so he ran up to the sun and stole fire from God and now he's chained in hell with an eagle pecking his liver for eternity?
en.wikipedia.org...

Isis and Horus / Mary and Jesus

Another favorite. Mary, the daughter the gods of the Earty and the goddess of the Sky and a goddess in her own right, and her lovely son and his four lovely and important sons. And Mary marries her own brother just like Isis did -- things were very amoral among the gods in those days, but it's a great story. But Mary and Joseph redeem themselves (even though they're gods) by teaching humans to plant crops and to herd animals. They had such busy lives!
www.egyptianmyths.net...

I enjoy the story about how Joseph's evil brother decides to murder him by inviting him to a party and then shutting Joseph in a coffin and throwing it into a river... and then recovering the body (after Mary finds it) and cutting it into a bunch of pieces and how Mary goes to God and asks for a spell and collects the pieces (except for the male genitals which were swallowed by a fish who refused to give them back and that's why Jews don't eat fish) and Joseph becomes the god of the Underworld:
en.wikipedia.org...

The story where he and his uncle (when he becomes an adult) trying to win the race of "which god will be worshipped" is an interesting one, of course. Here we have Jesus fighting with his Evil Older Uncle God who tears out Jesus' eye (and Jesus goes to the god of healing who replaces the eye with the moon). Then there's some hot sex between Jesus and his Evil Uncle God (at least, this happens to Horus... www.egyptiandreams.co.uk... ) and eventually all becomes right. Jesus occasionally flaps around as a falcon and one of the birth stories says that Mary laid an egg (no manger) but when Jesus hatched, he was fully feathered and winged and could fly as far as the eye can see ... like Horus of the Horizon.

Zues, yahwe

Spelled "Zeus" and "Yahweh" ... and here you're trying to connect a tribal shepherd deity ("Yahweh") who apparently at one time had a snake goddess as his lover-wife with a famous Greek deity who had a nagging wife, multiple love affairs, and liked to change himself into bulls and swans and had numerous half-god sons and daughters.

sun disks on Egyptian gods heads / halos on Christan saints

Head-circles are common in all cultures. Ancient Polynesians used a circle or a rainbow to designate the "head man" or "chief" on their rock art. Some of these cultures never had contact with Christianity (and had these symbols) before Christians showed up to civilize them.

Now the sources are all primary lets call them we can look at the pictures and make the outcomes ourselves.

I'm afraid you don't have the primary or even secondary sources. Yours are about 5th or 6th hand.
I suggest:
www.hallofmaat.com...
Wikipedia
www.sk4p.net...
Bullfinch's Mythology (an old one but excellent source for the Greek myths)
www.allabouthistory.org...
and
www.mythweb.com...

to start.

I have been searching for some myself but nothing substantual has come up yet

Because the "Zeitgeist" connection was based on the writings of two people who wrote before the Rosetta stone had been found and the Egyptian hieroglyphics translated and were ... well... they made it all up, frankly, based on their (very wrong) interpretation of a few statues and some paintings.

Originally posted by Jenna
The Religious Tolerance website has a few pages that may be helpful though:

Were elements of Jesus' life copied from other saviors/god-men/heroes?
and
Parallels between Christianity and ancient Pagan religions

At the bottom of the second link there is also a list of books for where they got there information, and at the bottom of the first there are a few other related pages that may be helpful.

Checking their sources (and reading the articles) they rely too heavily on the very debunked Zeitgeist material.

This page is particularly bad ("Anup the baptizer" should make everyone cringe. Egyptians had no such belief) : www.religioustolerance.org...

I can rant on and on...but won't.

I urge you instead to read sites that have translations of the stories as the primary material.

Alexander Hislop's book, "The Two Babylons" explains many of the symbols. celebrations, and beliefs of Christianity and shows the link to ancient Babylon's pagan beliefs. He explains in great detail the pagan origins of celebrations like Easter & Christmas and even the Trinity.


He even spends time discussing the garb of the Catholic priests, in particular, the Miter hat worn by the Pope.

Very interesting reading.



[edit on 3-9-2008 by Sparky63]

Originally posted by Byrd
First off i am sorry for the miss spelling of the words i use a word editor it didn't pick up the words .

The content you posted is exactly what i needed.
I am only confused about the sources.
A primary source is a source that is there at the time and the most substantial source correct?

Now if we use the sun disk for example and compare it to halos i am still using a primary source ( pictures from Egypt) but i am interpreting in my own way.

Now i may be wrong but inst it still a primary source even though i am putting my own interpenetration on it?

Originally posted by syress
The content you posted is exactly what i needed.
I am only confused about the sources.
A primary source is a source that is there at the time and the most substantial source correct?

Yes, assuming you know about the topic.

Now if we use the sun disk for example and compare it to halos i am still using a primary source ( pictures from Egypt) but i am interpreting in my own way.

Now i may be wrong but inst it still a primary source even though i am putting my own interpenetration on it?

No.

You're an "non-informed source."

A primary source would be the hieroglyphic texts next to the pictures of the gods who wear the sun halo (which is only the designated sun god of the era of Egyptian history (there were several and some blended into others)).

Secondary sources would be archaeologists who read hieroglyphics and can identify which god's name is appearing and in what context (is it a prayer or a mural about the journey to the afterlife or is it an offering or is it a blessing or is it a spell of protection or what... and which other gods are in there and when it was done and what the tranlation says.)

Teritary sources discuss primary and secondary sources.

Uninformed sources are those who believe they can acquire information about something simply by looking at it. There is nothing wrong with an uninformed source -- BUT -- they quite often get things wrong if they are not familiar with the context of the item they're looking at.

An "uninformed source" local telling you about the food at a restaurant is valuable (you don't need a scientist... you need a person.) "Uninformed sources" are very critical if you're doing research on a product ("no, really... is the Chicken Ripple Ice Cream tasty to you?")

Culture is a very quirky thing. I ran across that in class last night when someone couldn't understand a "futurist" article from the magazine, "The New Yorker" and found it too difficult to read. Their culture (small town in Oklahoma) didn't prepare them for reading and relating to something like that.

Another difference in sources... if you're writing or making conclusions about something, you have to look at as many cases as possible of this and read about the items. In other words, you have to look at a few hundred pictures of the Egyptian gods and read the texts (and look up some of the cultural significances such as the position of the god in the pantheon and figure out which symbols are their name) before you make any conclusions about the use of the sun disk in Egypt.

...and probably also look at the material from Ahkenaten and then read up on the way he treated his people and the great dislike fort him and some of the new research about him since he adopted the solar deity name.

...and you'd also have to look up the tradition around the Levant of the god-kings (because that's apparently where he gets this from) and the things that come from it (Cleopatra declaring herself to be the Living Isis, for example.)

This is excellent information thank you very much.
For my essay i am trying to provide a impersonal argumentative view on the links between the religions and finding the sources was hard but with your advice and the links people provided i should be able to put together a good paper.

once again thank you very much

Read "the Gods of Eden" by William Bramley.

All the world religions were invented to control and dominate people.

There are similarities between all the major religions with the newer ones replacing the older ones as the need came along.

Our true spirituality and potential has been kept from us and this is one major conspiracy.

Read "The Biggest Secret" by David Icke.

The quote below is from this site: www.rinf.com...

TextReligion is the greatest form of mind control every invented.

Many people mix up being spiritual with being religious, they are two different things totally.

TextYou may look around and think that what you see is "real". But in truth you are living in an illusion - an illusion designed to keep you in a mental, emotional, and spiritual prison cell.

www.bibliotecapleyades.net...

Does David Icke still believe that the Piso family invented Christianity?

[edit on 7-9-2008 by Eleleth]

Originally posted by Byrd

Checking their sources (and reading the articles) they rely too heavily on the very debunked Zeitgeist material.

My mistake, I actually hadn't ever heard of the Zeitgeist material until literally just now. The links were from a quick Google search and I skimmed over them enough to see if it was what I had searched for, but didn't really read them well. May need to do some reading instead of skimming!