Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, November 19, 1999

A Plethora of Saviours

Christians claim Jesus Christ was a full and perfect God, and at the same time a perfect man whose birth was supernatural and testimony to his divinity. He supposedly had a human being for a mother, and a god for his father, but the human mother was not really human because she was free of the original sin that the church tells us all descendents of Adam cannot avoid and she remained sinless throughout her life. Though a god, Jesus was also a son of God, and as such was sent down by his father to save a fallen and guilty world. His mission was to the whole of creation, mortal and immortal:

That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2:10-11

Even according to the Christian legend, some of those personally acquainted with him, some of his own kinfolk, children in the same household, children of the same mother—questioned his claim to messiahship. Christians make a great play of this as proof that they had no faith. Even though they knew Jesus as a brother since birth, Christian believers who never knew him at all, except in their heads, are vastly superior simply because they have the faith that his mother and brothers lacked. Finding this faith, achieving this blissful state of belief is considered, by the faithful, an uplifting experience of God's grace which in itself proves the truth of the belief.

Curious it is then that when we extend our researches to other times and countries, we find whole nations who join with the faithful of Jesus Christ in experiencing such conversions. Yet, they contest the Christians' claims because they believe quite different people were God's saviours and did the job better than Jesus. Millions of believers admit both a god and a saviour but do hot accept Jesus of Nazareth as being either. Theirs is the true saviour on grounds including priority and superiority. Their Messiah appeared long before Jesus and must therefore have better claim to be the genuine saviour, and their Messiah behaved in a superior, more God-like or saviour-like way.

We have just recounted two reasons for disputing that Jesus was truly the divine saviour.

1. How could his own nearest relatives disbelieve the word of a divine being?
2. What is the point of being divine if it confers no benefits of persuasion, among others?

Could it be that Jesus really was just human? And, how was Jesus the “only begotten” Son of God, seeing that a multitude of similar claims were made before? There is no rational explanation to these questions, as to most put in questioning Christianity.

Many messiahs, saviours, redeemers and sons of God have, according to their followers, descended from heaven, taken the form of men while showing they were divine by miracles, works and virtues. Often they have shown how the world could be saved or civilised, died cruelly and finally ascended back to heaven. Among them were:

1. Christ of Palestine.
2. Joseph Smith of the USA.
3. Vishnu, Rama, Krishna and Buddha (and others) of India.
4. Osiris and Horus of Egypt.
5. Zoroaster and Mithras of Persia.
6. Baal the only Begotten of God of Phœnicia and Canaan.
7. Indra of India and Tibet.
8. Tammuz of Syria.
9. Attis of Phrygia.
10. Adonis of Syria.
11. Hercules of Thebes.
12. Prometheus of the Caucasus.
13. Esus (Hesus) of the Druids.
14. Thor, son of Odin, of the Scandinavians.
15. Kadmos or Kadmilos of Thebes and Samothrace.
16. Quexalcoatl of Mexico.
17. Fo, the Buddha of China.
18. Mohammed of Arabia.

All—even Mohammed as the Moslem fuss over Salman Rushdie has proven—are treated as divine or quasi-divine. Many were worshipped as gods, or sons of God. Most were incarnated as Christs, saviours, God-sent prophets, messiahs or mediators. Several were born of virgins. Many were apparently crucified or suffered cruel deaths. Together, they furnish a prototype or parallel for nearly every incident, miracle, doctrine and precept recorded in the New Testament, and the more modern ones have continued the tradition by adapting from the New Testament. With so many saviours, one wonders why the world is not by now fully saved.

Incarnate Gods, in character often resembling the miraculous Christ, have been worshipped in most religions of the heathen nations of antiquity. Gods similar in features to Jesus Christ were venerated in East and West centuries before Jesus Christ was thought of. In intention—and sometimes even in details, from the legend of the immaculate conception to that of the tortured death and ascension into heaven—their characteristics are so similar to the Christian saviour that from a summary of their careers one could mistake them for each other:

• Many had a miraculous birth.
• Many had virgin mothers.
• Many were born on the 25th of December.
• The advent of many into the world was foretold by inspired prophets.
• Stars figured at the birth of several of them.
• Angels, shepherds, and magi or wise men figured at the birth of several of them.
• Many were of royal or princely descent.
• Their lives were threatened in infancy by the ruler of the country.
• Several gave early proof of divinity.
• Many retired from the world and fasted.
• Some preached a spiritual religion.
• Some were anointed.
• Many died for the sins of the world.
• After three days' interment many rose from the dead.
• Many ascended to heaven.
• At their death, nature often convulsed in dramatic ways.
• Most were called saviour, son of God. messiah, redeemer, Lord, etc.
• Many were in a trinity.
• Many had an apocalyptic message to save the world from evil.

When Jesus Christ has so many predecessors as world saviour, how can Christians be sure that they have the proper one? How can they claim they have the “only” one in the face of manifest facts to the contrary? If the saviour Christ is not the first, the possibility arises that he is merely a variety of some other of Pagan saviour or even a deliberate copy. Here we shall look at some of the previous religions that depended on the idea of a saving god or son of God who died for mankind.

Some Saviours were Real People.

Christians assert that the incarnated gods and crucified saviours of Pagan religions were either imaginary or ordinary human beings wrongly elevated by divine titles. Only Jesus Christ really was divine! Yet, whoever the saviour, his disciples offer the same kind of evidence to prove their beliefs that each really existed, were really gods, really walked and talked amongst men, and now really look down on us from heaven, or whatever. All of them stand on an equal footing. Most are mythical or cannot be distinguished from the myths that have accreted about them.

Few missionaries to India question the belief there that Krishna and Buddha once really lived. No one can automatically discard the Mahabarata, the history of Rama, of Krishna, and the five Pandava brothers as allegories and fabulous beings. Ancient temples and caves suggest their reality. Krishna apparently lived at the end of the bronze age, about eleven hundred or twelve hundred years before Christ, and Buddha about 600 years before Christ.

Regarding Bacchus or Dionysos, generally considered fabulous, Diodorus Siculus says that the Libyans claimed Bacchus, and that he was the son of Ammon, a king of Libya who built a temple to his father. It seems he planted vine-yards and fig-trees, and erected many noble cities. His skill in legislation and agriculture is much praised. It is not hard to see how such a great king in antiquity could live on as the god Bacchus.

The oldest gods might have been mythological aspects of the sun. The first supreme god of every nation, not excepting the Jews, was the sun, but then their names were given to children in the hope that they might grow up with some of the god's power. It is common to find men in India and elsewhere with gods' names but it is wrong to assume that some of the gods were not originally men. A great king or lawgiver could easily have had a name of the sun, either as a birth name or as a title, so that, after his death, his real exploits were transferred to the god, and the man thereby became deified. If some of them are found to have been real bona fide human beings, it is foolish to deny the possibility for any.

Bearing in mind that the priests had everything at their disposal, and the strongest motives for suppressing evidence, it is not surprising the histories of some of these gods is obscure. In every case, the saviour was incarnate and in nearly every case the place in which he was actually born was exhibited to the people. The memories of many of them have been consecrated and perpetuated by tombs placed beside their temples, which is further evidence. Herodotus saw the tomb of Osiris at Sais nearly five centuries before Christ. Can we certainly say then that Osiris is nothing more than legendary? If so, the tomb was a fake. Are we sure?

Christians have never universally conceded that Jesus Christ had a corporeal existence on earth. In a note on Ignatius's Epistle to the Trallians, written in the third century, Cotilenius declares that it is as absurd to deny the doctrine which taught that Jesus Christ's body was a phantom (Docetism) as to deny that the sun shone at midday. He meant his physical body because he believed in his eternal existence as a spirit in heaven. Endless quarrels went on about such matter with accusations of heresy and excommunications bandied about. Today the church accepts them all as long as the platters keep coming back full.

Whole sects advocating similar views were found in the early ages of the Christian church. One of the most primitive and learned sects were the Manicheans, who denied that Jesus Christ ever existed in flesh and blood, but believed him to be a god in spirit only. Others denied him to be a god, but believed him to have been a prophet, or inspired character, like the Unitarians of the present day. Some denied his crucifixion, others asserted it.

In the apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas, we learn Jesus Christ was not crucified, but was carried to heaven by four angels. And from the earliest times there was a long list of sincere Christians who denied that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. There could have been no grounds for denying these things at such an early date, if his manner of life had been so extraordinary as that related in the gospels.

So, the evidence to prove that the Pagan saviours did really possess a substantial, earthly and bodily existence is no less doubtful than that offered for Jesus.

Making Men Gods

Christians, especially fundamentalists, are always trying to make out that Jesus is and always was unique. It is not true. It is surprising to see how some of the early Christian writers spoil the dogmas of their own faith regarding the divinity of Jesus Christ. They place him level with Pagan demigods, suggesting that the belief in his divinity originated in the same way. Several early Christian writers admit the belief in earth-born gods, called Sons of Gods. Their coming into the world by human birth—the doctrine of the incarnation—was prevalent among Pagans long prior to the time of Christ.

God visiting and dwelling with man in some strange way is an idea which meets us in a thousand different forms in the writings of the ancient Pagans. Why then will Christians not tear the scales from their eyes so as to see that this universal belief could just as naturally lead to the deification of the noble Jewish leader Jesus as it did Julius Caesar in the century before? Many of the first Christians were converts from Paganism, their imaginations were familiar with the reputed incarnation of Pagan gods. How natural for such converts initially to come to worship their hero, Jesus, as a god from his exemplary life and self-sacrifice!

Justin cannot deny that there were many men famous for their goodness and piety, as well as wisdom, long before Jesus was thought of. He solves the problem (1 Apol 46) in a simple but dishonest way, and one used by Christians ever since—all good men were Christians whether they knew it or not! Christ was the Word (logos) of God, a concept going back to Heraclitus and interpreted as meaning order and reason. So, those who lived “reasonably” are Christians. Examples among the Greeks were Socrates and Heraclitus, even though they had been thought atheists.

S Justin Martyr concedes that the oriental Pagans held all the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith relating to the incarnation long prior to the introduction and establishment of Christianity. He tells us there is nothing remarkable in calling Jesus a son of God because “all writers call God the Father of men and gods”. Nor is calling him “the Word” remarkable because “Mercury is the angelic word of God”. Addressing the Pagan Greeks and Romans, he says:

The title of Son of God, as applied to Jesus Christ, is very justifiable upon the account of his wisdom, considering you have your Mercury in your worship, under the title of Word or Messenger of God.

Here is the proof that the tradition of a messenger coming into the world, as “the Word” (logos) was established amongst the ancient Greeks and Romans long before the era of Christianity, or the birth of Christ. Yet millions of Christians, in their ignorance of history, still suppose the author of John's gospel was the first writer to teach the doctrine of “the Word”. Ignorance is the mother of creeds.

For by declaring the Logos the first begotten Son of God, our Master, Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin without any human mixture and to be crucified and dead and to have risen again into heaven, we say no more in this than what you say of those whom you style the sons of Jove.

Justin Martyr, 1 Apol 21

One of the first Christian writers is admitting a lot here that modern Christians strenuously try to deny. The belief in an incarnate Son of God is traced to Paganism. So is the doctrine of a “first begotten Son of God”, and so is his being born of a virgin. And his crucifixion. And his resurrection. And his final ascension into heaven. Every essential point of Christianity! All these cardinal doctrines of Christianity are here shown by a Christian of the time to have been accepted by Pagans long before the Christian era, entirely upsetting the Christian claim that these doctrines were introduced only when the Christian god arrived.

In all religions there were incarnate gods. The most ancient histories are those of gods becoming incarnate to govern mankind. The idea sprang up from ideas prevalent everywhere that gods formerly descended upon earth. Not finding any gods actually coming to earth any more, some enterprising priest proposed that they were still coming but disguised as men. That explained why some men were very clever, or brave or good. Fertile human imagination converted men into gods.

No unbiased mind can stave off the conclusion that the Christian incarnation cannot be considered unique in such a universal prevalence of incarnated gods throughout the religious world.

Justin Martyr is an important witness to the commonality of ideas in religious ideas up to the mid-second century. Justin in his plea to the emperor Antoninus Pius admits that even at this early date, Christians had much in common with other sects and beliefs in the empire:

We say that all things have been produced and arranged into a world by God, so seeming to utter the doctrine of Plato. We say that there will be a burning up of all, so seeming to utter the doctrine of the Stoics. We affirm that the souls of the wicked, being endowed with sensation even after death, are punished, and that those of the good being delivered from punishment spend a blessed existence, so seeming to say the same things as the poets and philosophers. We maintain that men ought not to worship the works of their hands, so saying the very things which have been said by the comic poet Menander, and other similar writers, for they have declared that the workman is greater than the work.

Justin Martyr, 1 Apol 20

Justin Martyr notes that Christ was no different from Pagan gods in being the Judge:

Plato used to say that Rhadamanthus and Minos would punish the wicked who came before them and we say that the same thing will be done, but at the hand of Christ.

Justin Martyr, 1 Apol 8

Justin however said the wicked were “to undergo everlasting punishment; and not only, as Plato said, for a period of a thousand years”. Quite strange, this, for in Revelation that is considered to precede Justin by at least 50 years, a period of 1000 years is indeed mentioned (Rev 20:3,4,5,7) as the millennial rule of Christ only after which, in “the second death”, the wicked are punished for eternity. Justin cannot be said to be wrong but seems not to know about the millennium interval.

Justin compares Jesus with the sons of Jupiter, each of whom had some quality attributed to Christ, and declares them all the work of demons anticipating the coming of the Christian Saviour. It might convince Christians, but it admits that all the things that made Jesus divine had been anticipated in the sons of Jove:

Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all, Aesculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven, and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb, and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils, and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri, and Perseus, son of Danae, and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus.

Justin Martyr, 1 Apol 21

Bellerophon, a man born of man, himself ascended to heaven on his horse Pegasus. And when they heard it said by the other prophet Isaiah, that He should be born of a virgin, and by His own means ascend into heaven, they pretended that Perseus was spoken of. And when they knew what was said, as has been cited above, in the prophecies written aforetime, “Strong as a giant to run his course”, they said that Hercules was strong, and had journeyed over the whole earth. And when, again, they learned that it had been foretold that He should heal every sickness, and raise the dead, they produced Aesculapius.

Justin Martyr, 1 Apol 54

Because the Pagan religions had rituals of baptism, Justin is obliged to argue again that the “devils instigated those who enter their temples, and are about to approach them with libations and burnt-offerings, also to sprinkle themselves, and they cause them also to wash themselves entirely, as they depart, before they enter into the shrines in which their images are set. And the command, too, given by the priests to those who enter and worship in the temples, that they take off their shoes”. (1 Apol 62)

Considering that Christians put a huge amount of faith in the supposed eyewitness evidence of the gospels, a remarkable feature of Justin's apology is that he disparages the eyewitness evidence of people who swear they had seen the spirit of the emperor rising to heaven from his funeral pyre:

What of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre?

Justin Martyr, 1 Apol 21

Quite how this differs from someone doing the same in some unverified book, is beyond comprehension. Justin then goes on to show that the manner of Jesus's birth was not remarkable because Romans were familiar with such means of birth.

And if we even affirm that He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Perseus.

Justin Martyr, 1 Apol 22

Nor was there anything astonishing about him curing sick people, “the lame, the paralytic, and those born blind”, for:

We seem to say what is very similar to the deeds said to have been done by Aesculapius.

Justin Martyr, 1 Apol 22

Then he says, “But if any one objects that he was crucified, in this also he is on a par with those reputed sons of Jupiter of yours, who suffered as we have now enumerated”. In fact, Justin had not enumerated any sufferings of the “reputed sons of Jupiter”, suggesting that a passage has been excised, but he then says:

For their sufferings at death are recorded to have been not all alike, but diverse, so that not even by the peculiarity of his sufferings does he seem to be inferior to them.

Justin Martyr, 1 Apol 22

Later, we read:

But in no instance, not even in any of those called sons of Jupiter, did they imitate the being crucified, for it was not understood by them, all the things said of it having been put symbolically.

Justin Martyr, 1 Apol 55

Sons of Jupiter were indeed crucified, but only in a way they did not understand—symbolically! In chaper 60 of Justin's first apology, he writes that concerning the Son of God, in Timaeus, Plato says,

He placed him crosswise in the universe,

Justin claims Plato got this from Moses, but cites the incident in Numbers 21 when he makes a serpent of brass. The trouble is that Justin, being a Christian, claims it is a cross of brass!

Moses, by the inspiration and influence of God, took brass, and made it into the figure of a cross, and set it in the holy tabernacle, and said to the people, If ye look to this figure, and believe, ye shall be saved thereby.

Why Men were Worshipped as Gods

God must come down to suffer and sympathize with the people.

Ancient people had to think that their gods felt as they did. They knew the gods had mysterious powers and were not generally like humans but they had to feel that the God could understand the human predicament. That meant the god actually had to become human to experience it, become, like Jesus Christ, “touched with a feeling of our infirmities” (Heb 4:15)—a God so invested with human attributes, human frailties, and human sympathies that he could shoulder their burdens and their infirmities, and take upon himself a portion of their sufferings. Christ “himself took our infirmities” (Mt 3:17).

The same concept runs through the Pagan systems. One Pagan authority writes thus:

The Creator occasionally assumed a mortal form to assist mankind in great emergencies.

Jesus Christ was afterward reported as being the Creator in Paul's writings (Col 1:16). As repeated sojourners on earth in various capacities, the saviours became practically acquainted with all the sorrows and temptations of humanity, and could justly judge of its sins while they sympathized with its weaknesses and its sufferings. When they again returned to heaven, they remembered the lower forms they had dwelt amongst, and felt a lively interest in the world they had once inhabited. They could penetrate even the secret thoughts of mortals.

The people, then, demanding a God of sympathy and suffering, their credulous imaginations would not be long in finding one. Any man who rose in society with sympathy for human suffering or even who was merely thought to have had such sympathy from stories of his visiting and consoling the sorrows of the poor, would certainly command the homage of a God. This was the way an ignorant, undeveloped, and unenlightened people explained moral greatness and mental and physical superiority.

The people must have an external God they could see, hear, and talk to.

All the orientals as well as Christians taught that God was a spirit but nobody, even the founders of Christianity, were consistent in the doctrine. A few learned philosophers questioned the scientific possibility of an infinite spirit being crowded into a human form and they alone were contented to accept God in spirit and in truth. Simpler people went against this injunction and had to worship a god in human form. The founders of Christianity, though making high claims to spirituality, were too gross and too idolatrous to worship a transcendental God in spirit. Hence their deification of “the man Christ Jesus” to fulfil the demands of simple gentiles thus violating the command to worship God as a spirit.

A Christian writer tells us:

The ideas of primitive people were subject entirely to the senses. The masses did not believe in anything that they could not touch, see, hear and taste.

A true description, no doubt, of the ancient Pagan worshippers of demigods. But, if we are to believe literally testimony from the authors of the gospels, the same state of mind existed with the people among whom Christ taught, or rather the Christians who would read the fanciful works of propaganda written by the evangelists Luke and John (Lk 24:39-43; Jn 20:25;27-29). This sensuous, idolatrous state of mind among his disciples yielded him the homage and title of a god.

Archbishop Tillotson said long ago:

Another very common notion, and rife in the heathen world, and a great source of their idolatry, was their deification of great men fit to be worshipped as gods. There was a great inclination in mankind to the worship of a visible Deity. So God was pleased to appear in our Nature, that they who were fond of a visible Deity might have one, even a true and natural incarnation of God the Father, the express image of his person.

This Christian bishop allows that Jesus Christ appeared on earth as a god in condescension to the wishes of a people too devoid of spirituality and too strongly inclined to idolatry to worship God as a spirit. For he admits the worship of a demigod is a species of idolatry. This tells the whole story of the apotheosis of Jesus. Again he says:

The world was mightily bent on addressing their requests and supplications, not to the Deity immediately, but by some Mediator between the gods and men.

The Christian scholar tells us the belief in mediators is Pagan. Archbishop Whately added:

As the Infinite Being is an object too remote and incomprehensible for our minds to dwell upon, he has manifested himself in his Son, the man Jesus Christ.

Precisely so! Just the kind of reasoning employed to account for the worship of demigods among Pagans. This logic fits one case as well as the other. Similarly another Christian writer declares:

We accept the fact of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, because we feel that it is impossible to know the absolute invisible God, without an incarnation, as man needs to know him and craves to know him.

A Christian with the honesty of a Pagan—a rare thing! Yet the Pagan Hindu still is more succinct:

We could not always have God behind the clouds, so we had him come down where we could see him.

More simply put, but the reasoning is the same. The state of mind of both Pagans and Christians would not rest satisfied without deifying somebody to have a visible god to worship. The Rev Dr Thomas Arnold explains:

The incarnation of Christ was very necessary, especially at a time when men were so accustomed to worship their highest gods under the form of men.

This Christian commentator tells us that the absolute God could do no better than the human inventions of the Pagans—followers of the devil, they say. God makes Jesus Christ come into the world pandering to the idolatrous gentile desire to worship god in the form of man. Or more precisely the founders of Christianity adopt the popular customs of Pagan countries—they make a noble man a God. The psychology is explained by Dr T Chambers:

Whatever the falsely or superstitiously fearful imagination conjures up because of God being at a distance can only be dispelled by God being brought nigh to us. The veil which hides the unseen God from the eyes of mortals must be somehow withdrawn. Now all this has been done once and done only once in the person of Jesus Christ.

The psychological insight is followed by typical Christian ignorance and unreason. Why does Dr Chambers think it happened only once when he explains to our satisfaction that the psychology is commonplace, and a thousand Pagan priests had realised it long before in raising many men to gods? It is simply Christian dishonesty.

We are too materialistic to worship God in spirit. Though the gullible drool over ideas of the paranormal, the spirit world and the supernatural, they must and will have a god who has “become flesh, and dwelt amongst us” (John 1:14), a god of flesh and blood who can be recognized by the external senses. The more materially minded, the greater the determination to worship a personal god—a god in the form of man.

God sent his Son Jesus Christ into the world to be worshipped as a God pandering to ignorant and superstitious tendencies of the people. Why then do Christians know that God did not send Pagan saviours into the world for the same reason? Why is it less likely? Why would he be less inclined to accommodate their ignorance and prejudices than those of the first Christians. And, if a Christian were to say, “Why not? Perhaps God did send others before”, then why do they not worship all of them equally?

Deification of Superior Men.

The ancient nations, unaware of the laws of distribution regarding human abilities and actions, always explained great men appearing amongst them by supposing them to be gods. When a man, through natural superiority, rose high in the scale of moral or intellectual greatness, he fulfilled the ideal of the people regarding the characteristics of a god. An outstanding man became a god.

Men of brilliant intellects and high moral attainments were almost certain to be deified. Archbishop Tillotson explains:

They deified famous and eminent persons by advancing them after their death to the dignity of an inferior kind of gods fit to be worshipped by men on earth.

Note, “after their death”. Jesus Christ was not generally considered a god, even by many of his followers, till more than three hundred years after his death, when Constantine declared him to be “God of very God”. What god would not be recognised as a god though he wore the cloak of a man? Only a man's worshippers rise up after his death.

The missionary, Rev D O Allens, tells us that, as the exploits ascribed to Krishna came to exceed mere human power, the problem of credibility was removed by placing him among the incarnations of Vishnu. Just so! Perhaps even the Christian reader will note the lesson it suggests. Can anyone not see here a satisfactory solution of the deityship of all the demigods of antiquity.

Christians often say a billion believers that Jesus is a God cannot be mistaken, and it cannot just be because of his superiority as a man. Well, if it is a numbers game we are playing, why not use the same argument about Krishna. How can a billion Indians believe in his divinity, and worship him as a God, merely because he was a superior human being? One question is as easily asked as the other and reason will answer both questions alike. Christians have to show what the difference is between Krishna and Christ to require us to accept one merely as a man but the other as a god. It cannot be done.

The Hebrew God not only comes down from heaven as a man and walks, talks and even wrestles as a man, for on one occasion he scuffled with Jacob all night, but he is not even a good man. He lies (2 Chron 5:22), gets mad (Dt 1:37), sanctions the crimes of stealing (Ex 3:2), robbery (Ex 12:36), murder (Dt 13:2) and even fornication (Gen 31:1 and Num 31). The moral character of God is reduced to the level of the most immoral man in society. With a god like that, it is hardly surprising that they looked for a better one among men.

Every person who possessed a striking superiority of mind, either for talent or goodness, was supposed to have a portion of the divine mind or essence incorporated or incarnated in him. The Jews had a number of men whose names imply a participation in the divine Nature, among which we will cite Elijah and Elisha (Eli-jah and Eli-sha), El being the Hebrew name for God, Jah means the god Yehouah (shortened to Yeho or Yah, Ps 68:4), and Sha (Osea) means a saviour. Elijah, stands for “My God is Jehovah” and Elisha stands for “My God is Saviour”.

Men and gods were thought of a so similar in personality and the change from one to the other so easy, whether men to gods or gods to men, that several nations believed a man might raise himself by his own natural exertions to the level of gods and so become a god.

Some Buddhists held that a man could deliver his fellows from the corruption of the times and become a benefactor and redeemer of his race by freeing himself through holy conduct from the obstacles of Nature. Thus he could become a god—a Buddha—a saviour and son of God.

The Christian might object to this doctrine as being blasphemous, but his own bible enjoins him to do precisely the same, though few do:

Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect,

Mt 5:18

requires a man to become as morally perfect as God just as the Buddhist precept contemplates. For no man can become as perfect as God without becoming a God, which is exactly what the Essenes, whose doctrine this was, believed. The bible teaches men of their ability to be a god or a son of God:

Said I not that ye are gods?

Ex 4:16

Behold now, we are the sons of God.

1 John 1:2

It is a Christian bible doctrine as well as a Pagan doctrine that man can become a God. The only difference in Christianity is that they have made it harder, so that only Jesus has been allowed to do it. But insofar as the bible itself says we all are gods or sons of gods, it cannot be considered special or marvellous.

God is Incarnated to Conquer the Devil.

It was a tenet of faith of the ancient religions, more especially after the Persian conquests, that at the dawn of human existence a devil or evil principle found its way into the world, to the great discomfiture of man and the annoyance of the Supreme Creator. The consequence is that a saviour must arrive to combat and destroy the devil and his works. For this purpose, the saviour Krishna in India, the saviour Osiris in Egypt, the god or mediator Mithras in Persia and the saviour Jesus Christ in Judaea appeared in turn.

Some of the oriental bibles describe “the war in heaven”—the originator of the twelfth chapter of Revelation, wherein Michael and the dragon are represented as the captains and commander-in-chief of their respective embattled armies. Michael was crowned as victor in the contest when he succeeded in vanquishing and “casting out the evil one”. This was the Essene myth that gave rise to Christianity, unrecognized for what it is because it is supposed to be prophecy!

The war in heaven has its counterpart on the earth. A demigod, a saviour or son of god, comes down to put a stop to the machinations of the Evil One, to destroy the devil and his works as we are told Christ came for that purpose (1 Jn 3:8).

The story in the Egyptian tradition runs thus:

Osiris appeared on earth to benefit mankind. After he had performed the duties of his mission he fell a sacrifice to Typhon, the devil or evil principle. After being crucified, he overcame the Evil One (“overcame the wicked one”, 1 Jn 2:13) by rising from the dead. He became the judge of mankind in a future state.

The Buddhist, or Hindu, version of the story is:

The prince of darkness or evil spirit, Ravana, or Mahesa, got into a war with the divine hero Rama. The latter proved victorious and put to flight the army of “the wicked one”, but not till after considerable injury had been done to the human family, and the whole order of the universe had been subverted. To correct it and to achieve a final and complete triumph over Ravana and his works, and thus save the human race from utter destruction, the gods besought Vishnu, the second person of the Trinity, to descend to the earth and take upon himself the form and flesh of man.

And as the mission appertained to man, the God Vishnu, when he descended to the earth as a Saviour, had to become half man and half God. The way this would be accomplished was for him to be born of a woman. And that the glory and honour of his triumph over Ravana, the devil, would be greater if achieved in this capacity than if he were to come down from heaven and conquer Ravana wholly with his attributes as a God, or wholly in his divine character—as absolute God, uninvested with human Nature.

Vishnu agreed, descended and took upon himself the form of man (“the form of a servant” Phil 2:7). And that his metamorphosis or earth-born life might be the purer, it was decided that he should be born of a woman wholly uncontaminated with man—a virgin.

Ancient Aryans originated the story of divine saviours and gods born of virgins—an idea later incorporated in the religious histories of various ancient nations.

Titles of the Saviours

Many people were addressed by the titles used of Jesus such as “God”, “Lord”, “Saviour”, “Redeemer”, “Mediator”, “Messiah”, and so on. Adonis, whose name means “Lord”, was addressed as “God Supreme”, and Osiris of Egypt as the “Lord of Life”. In Phrygia, it was “Lord Attis”, as Christians say, “Lord Jesus Christ”.

Thor of the Scandinavians was denominated the “first-born Son of God” and so was Krishna of India and other demigods. The title “Son of God” was so common in nearly all religious countries as to excite but little awe or attention. S Basil said:

Every uncommonly good man was called, the Son of God.

Plainly then faith is quite divorced from reason in those who believe that Jesus Christ was uniquely the “Son of God” when so many others in history have the same title.

The title “Saviour” is found in the religious legends of every country. According to the old Christian missionary, Huc, when a Mongol or Tibetan was asked who is Krishna, the reply was, instantly, “the Saviour of men”. Buddha was known as “the Saviour, Creator and Wisdom of God”, and Mithras was “Mediator”, “Redeemer” and “Saviour”. Krishna was known as the “Divine Redeemer” and the “Redeemer of the World”. “Mediator” and “Intercessor” were also terms often applied to him by his disciples. Most ancient religious nations expected a saviour.

Was Jesus Christ the “Lamb of God” (Jn 1:9)? Krishna was the “Holy Lamb”. The Aztecs, preferring a full grown sheep, had their “Ram of God”. The Celts had their “Heifer of God”, and the Egyptians their “Bull of God”. All these terms are primitive emblems of god, representing him as a quadruped, as the title “Lamb of God” does Jesus Christ.

Churchmen will tell you the title is metaphorical not literal, but is that how it was originally intended? Or were the early Christians being opportunistic yet again, using Pagan titles to win over Pagan converts? In any case, if this is metaphorical, why not accept that the whole story of Jesus is metaphorical—it is a myth meant to illustrate certain beliefs, but not historically true.

Was Christ the “True Light” (Jn 1:9)? Krishna also was the “True Light”, and the “Giver of Light”, the “Inward Light”, and so on. Osiris was the “Redeemer of Light”, and Pythagoras was “Light and Truth”. Apollonius was styled the “True Light of the World” while Simon Magus was called the “Light of all Men”. Since early high gods were usually the sun or a sky god that incorporated the sun, light metaphors were common and understandable. It became part of religious language and stayed with us ever since.

Several nations had also their Christs, though in many cases the word is differently spelled. The Chaldeans had their Chris, the Hindus their Krishna, the Greeks their Chrest, and the Christians their Christ, all, doubtless, derived from the same original, probably Indo-European, root.

Chrest, the Greek mode of spelling Christ, may be found on several of the ancient tombstones of that country. Christian writers have sometimes spelled the word Christ as Chrest. The people of Loretto had a black Saviour, called Chrest, or Christ. Lucian, in his Philopatris, admits the ancient gentiles had the name of Christ, which shows it was a Pagan title.

As for Jesus, it was a common name among the Jews long before the advent of Christ. Josephus refers to seven or eight persons by that name, as Jesus, brother of Onias, Jesus, son of Phabet, and so on. Joshua in the Greek form, Jesus, was in still more common use, and the Joshuas of the Old Testament are called “Jesus” in the Greek Septuagint.

Again, was Jesus Christ the “Alpha and Omega”, the “Beginning and the End?” Krishna proclaimed: “I am the Beginning, the Middle, and the End”. Osiris and Krishna were both proclaimed “Judge of the Dead”, as Jesus was “Judge of the Quick and the Dead”. Isaiah represents the Father as proclaiming:

I am Jehovah. Besides me there is no saviour (Isa 43:11).

If the father was the saviour, what need had he of a saviour son? More importantly, if he had already declared there was no saviour but himself, why should anyone believe he was the saviour when he came to earth as a man saying he was one. It is hardly surprising that pious Jews at the time refused to believe Jesus was the saviour. Yehouah had told them only He was.

Origins of the Terms Mediator, Intercessor

Several causes contributed to originate a belief in the offices imaginarily assigned to divine God-descended Mediators, Redeemers, and Intercessors.

The Supreme God was believed to be too far off and too aristocratic to be on familiar terms with his subjects, or at all times accessible to their prayers. A middle God or Mediator was invented to stand midway between the Supreme and the knee-bending rabble, to pass on messages up to the responsible level and back. Maimonides in his Guide to the Perplexed declares that the Sabaeans (baptist followers of John the Baptist) decided the Most High was too many levels up the celestial ladder to be accessible. In imitation of their conduct toward their king, who appointed a person to speak for the crowd and deliver judgements back to them, they appointed a middle divinity, called a Mediator, to present their claims to the Supreme God.

Again, the Supreme God was supposed to be frequently angry with the people, and threatening to punish if not to destroy them, as in Jeremiah 46:25: “I will punish the multitude;” Exodus 23:27: “I will destroy the people”. The middle divinity, stepped in to plead and intercede on their behalf, being, presumably, a better-natured and more merciful god than the Father. Moses was the first saviour of the Jews and became the model for the later one, according to the Christians. Thus he received the titles of “Intercessor” and “Advocate with the Father” (1 Jn 2:1).

The principal reason for the invention of a divine saviour was to find a way to continue in sin and yet escape any penalty. The theory was that people could indulge in their passions and lusts till the hour of death approached. Then they would ask forgiveness, casting the burden of their sins onto a crucified saviour and redeemer, who suffered once and for all, that we might dodge the penalty for sin. That way people could be free from the laws of morality, and escape the natural consequences of wrong doing.

The Miracles of Others

The age in which Christ flourished was an age of miracle. All nations of that time, were bent on working miracles. The disciples who acted the part of biographers for the crucified Saviours, throughout the East, set off the stories of their objects of worship with marvellous exploits. The miracles in each case were much of the same character, suggesting a common origin, possibly in the theological schools of the city of Alexandria.

These lists of miraculous events are not quoted because they are vouchsafed as true but because they are as true as those related of Jesus Christ.

• Hercules was miraculously born of a virgin.
• According to Ovid, Hercules miraculously cured the daughter of Archiades.
• Hercules also cured the wife of Theogenes, after the doctors had given her up.
• Osiris, while a sucking infant in his cradle, killed two serpents which came to destroy him.
• Both Hercules and Osiris converted water into wine.
• Both of them frequently cast out devils.
• Julius declares Hercules raised Tyndarus and Hippolitus from the dead.
• Osiris was resurrected by a miracle.
• They ascend to heaven in sight of many witnesses.
• From Alexandria the whole empire became filled with the fame of these miracle-workers, who restored the blind to sight, cured the paralytic, caused the dumb to speak, the lame to walk. All these miracles were as credibly related of these Gods as similar miracles of Jesus Christ.

Pythagoras. For humility, and practical goodness, and the wisdom of his moral precepts, Pythagoras stood without a rival. He discarded bloody sacrifices, discouraged wars, forbade the use of wine and other intoxicating drinks, enjoined the forgiveness of enemies and their kind treatment, and also respect to parents. He was a special friend to the poor, and taught that they were the favorites of God. He practiced and recommended the silent worship of God. He retired from the world, and often fasted, and was a great enemy to riches, like Jesus. He considered poverty a virtue and despised the pomp of the world.

He recommended, like Christ, the abandonment of parents, relations, and friends, houses and lands, for religion's sake. His disciples, like those of Christ, had a common treasury and a general community of goods, to which all had free access, so that there was no poverty or suffering amongst them while the supply lasted. All shared alike. In fact, with respect to the spirit of his precepts, his moral lessons, and nearly his whole practical life, he bore a striking resemblance to Jesus Christ. As he was born into the world 580 years before Christ, the direction of influence from one to the other, if any, could only have been from Pythagoras to Christ, perhaps because the Essenes took lessons from the Pythagoreans, or from a common Persian source, and from them the teaching of Jesus arose.

• Pythagoras was a spirit in heaven before he was born on earth.
• His birth was miraculously foretold.
• His mother conceived him by a ghost (the Holy Ghost).
• His mother (Pytheas) was a holy virgin of great moral purity.
• Plato's mother, Paretonia, says Olympiodorus, conceived him by the God Apollo.
• Pythagoras in his youth astonishes the doctors by his wisdom.
• He was worshipped as the “Son of God, Paraclete (John's Comforter), Child of Divinity”.
• He could see events many ages in the future.
• He could bring down the eagle from his lofty height by command.
• He could approach and subdue the wild, ferocious Daunian bear.
• He could appear at two places at once.
• He could walk on the water and travel on the air.
• Iamblicus says he could allay storms on the sea.
• He could discern and read the thoughts of his disciples.
• He could handle poisonous reptiles with impunity.
• He cured all manner of diseases.
• He restored sight to the blind.
• He cast out devils.
• He raised several persons from the dead.
• And, “a thousand other wonderful things are told of him”, says Iamblicus.

Romulus (Quirinus) and Prometheus.

• Prometheus had a miraculous birth.
• Quirinus was miraculously preserved in infancy when threatened with destruction by the tyrant ruler, Amulius.
• He performed the miracles, according to Seneca and Hesiod, of curing the sick, restoring the blind, raising the dead and casting out devils.
• Both these Gods were crucified amid signs, and wonders, and miracles.
• All Nature was convulsed and the saints arose when they were crucified.
• The sun was also darkened, and refused to shine.
• Both descended to hell, and rose from it by divine power.
• And Prometheus was seen to ascend to heaven.

Simon Magus Simon Magus is mentioned and condemned in the Acts of the Apostles, for offering to pay Peter to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Even if Peter's gift were genuine and not the trick that Simon took it to be, it was more courteous to offer to pay for the secret than to expect it as a favour. He excelled Peter as a gentleman especially as he bore Peter's reprimand with patience and showed a better spirit than Peter's. Though this Samaritan Jew is so unsparingly denounced by the godly Peter and by the early Christian fathers also, historical evidence shows he was an honest, pious and ardently devout man. His whole life was absorbed in the cause of religion, and his whole soul devoted to his religious duties and the worship of his God.

• It is declared, “he was in the beginning with God”.
• He existed with God from all eternity.
• He took upon himself the form of a man.
• He was the first-born Son of God.
• He was the Word.
• He was the second person in the godhead.
• He came down to destroy the devil and his works.
• He was the image of the Eternal Father.
• He could control the elements.
• He could walk on the air as Christ did on the water.
• He could move anything by the command, “Be thou removed”.
• He could raise the dead.
• He could transform himself into the image of any man.
• He was the Paraclete, or Comforter.
• He came to “redeem the world from sin”. and through his name men are to be saved.

S Justin Martyr refers explicitly to Simon Magus, saying that he and others who made the claim to be gods were not persecuted as Christ was but were deemed worthy of honours. Justin was a Samaritan writing from Samaria and knew of the Samaritan, Simon.

Simon was in the royal city Rome in the reign of Claudius Caesar, and so greatly astonished the sacred senate and people of the Romans, that he was considered a god, and honoured, like the others whom you honour as gods, with a statue.

Justin Martyr, 1 Apol 56

He was considered a god, and as a god was honoured by you with a statue, which statue was erected on the river Tiber, between the two bridges, and bore this inscription, in the language of Rome: “Simoni Deo Sancto”. (To Simon the holy God.) And almost all the Samaritans, and a few even of other nations, worship him, and acknowledge him as the first god, and a woman, Helena, who went about with him at that time, and had formerly been a prostitute, they say is the first idea generated by him.

Justin Martyr, 1 Apol 26

Quite remarkably, in this passage, Justin criticises a disciple of Simon called Meander, also a Samaritan, who:

Persuaded those who adhered to him that they should never die, and even now there are some living who hold this opinion of his.

On must wonder how this man differs in his promise from Justin himself and any other Christian. We soon discover the answer, but Justin apparently can see nothing odd. After briefly mentioning the heretic, Marcion, Justin admits that “all who take their opinions from these men” were called Christians.

Christians always depict Simon as a confidence trickster and a charlatan, yet cannot see why, if Simon Magus was so regarded, Paul was not thought of in the same way. The evidence of the New Testament is that people saw Paul in precisely that way, so what right have we to say they were wrong? Now we learn from Justin that Simon Magus and his disciples were all Christians, despite what we read in the New Testament about him being rejected and humiliated by Peter. And if Meander was a Christian himself, it is hardly surprising that he was promising eternal life. That is what they all promise! An interesting thought that has been presented is that Simon Magus was Paul, because even the New Testament is clear that Paul and Peter disagreed, though the aim of acts was to play the disagreement down.

Confucius (Kung-Fu Tse) 550 BC. This moral teacher, religious chieftain, and philosopher, though not subjected to the ignominious death of the cross, deserves a passing notice for the excellency of his morals and the acquisition of a world-wide fame. His history bears a strong analogy to that of Jesus Christ. He constructed several hundred beautiful and instructive moral maxims.

• He commenced as a religious teacher when about thirty years of age.
• The Golden Rule was his favorite maxim.
• Most of his moral maxims were sound and of a high order.
• He traveled in different countries, preaching and teaching his doctrines.
• He made a host of converts and there are still millions of his followers.
• His religion and morals have been propagated by apostles and missionaries. There was a time when European philosophers vied with each other in extolling Confucius as one of the sublimest teachers of truth among mankind.

In the following respects his teachings were superior to those of Christ:

• He taught that the knowledge of one's self is the basis of all real advances in morals and manners. A lesson Christ neglected to teach.
• The duties man owes to society and himself are minutely defined by Confucius. Another important work Christ largely omitted.

Three circumstances amply account for bibles and religious books being profusely supplied with the reports of groundless miracles.

1. People then were much inclined to believe in miracles and so not inclined to investigate them to learn the truth about them. It has always been so. Today the equivalent of the wonder workers of old have no less an audience than they had then. Modern psychics make fortunes from the gullibility of their followers who believe they really have mystical powers even after they have been shown to be simply conjurers. Very many people want to believe something mysterious! So a clever showman gives them what they want.
2. In the early history of Christianity, those like Porphyry and Celsus who tried to disprove the truth of the miracles of sacred history, had their books burned by the Christians who were as bigoted then as they have been at most times in history.
3. The facts about miracles were usually recorded long after the time they are supposed to have occurred. The events had certainly grown vastly in magnitude in the telling and any witnesses able to tell the real story had died. Even if some lived, they were not believed but were shunned as debunkers or patronised as having senile dementia. Those who wrote down the accounts were not all necessarily dishonest, though some surely were. Some will have been honest but gullible men simply recording what they had been told.

Discussion

From Jim Greenhow

Mike, I have the following comments on: Saviours—Christianity Revealed. AskWhy! Publications. Rather surprised that in the crucifixion paralels there is no mention of the Odin self-crucifixion story. Just thought I’d mention it.

From Mike

I seem to be short of literature on northern legends. What do you have to tell me?

Basically Odin crucifies himself on the World Tree [The ash tree, Yggdrasil, which equates to the world tree found in other crucifixion legends from around the world], including piercing his side with a spear, to gain the the secrets of the runes, conquering death and resurrecting himself in the process.

“For nine nights, wounded by my own spear, consecrated to Odin, myself consecrated to myself, I remained hanging from the tree shaken by the wind, from the mighty tree whose roots men know not. ”

For nine days and nights Odin waited in vain for someone to bring him food or drink, but by observing what went on beneath him he percieved some runes. With and effort that made him cry out aloud he managed to lift the runes and was set free by their magic. He was resurrected with renewed health, youth and vigour. Mimir gave him a few sips of hydromel and he became wise in word and deed, and his resurrection was complete.

Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology

Many thanks for your information. It was not that I had not heard of the Odin myth, it was just that I had no good account of it. Now that you have given me an outline, I’ll try to find a place for it.

• More about Odin is now at: Odin, Balder and Hoder

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