The Pagan Copycat Theory (Zeitgeist Debunked)

Charlie Campbell, author of Scrolls and Stones: Compelling Evidence the Bible Can Be Trusted, says, "Many of the charges put forth in Zeitgeist are based on outdated, disproved ideas that were in circulation at the beginning of the last century. Here is one example. Zeitgeist states that Attis (a Roman deity) was crucified, dead for three days and then resurrected. This is absolutely not true to the mythological account. In the mythological story, Attis was unfaithful to his goddess lover, and in a jealous rage she made him insane. In that insanity, Attis castrated himself and fled into the forest, where he bled to death. As J. Gresham Machen points out, "The myth contains no account of a resurrection; all that Cybele [the Great Mother goddess] is able to obtain is that the body of Attis should be preserved, that his hair should continue to grow, and that his little finger should move." Zeitgeist's claims that Attis was crucified and resurrected are not only inaccurate but very misleading. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. The alleged resurrection of Attis isn't even mentioned until after 150 A.D., long after the time of Jesus."

Dr. Norman Geisler, author or coauthor of more than 80 books, writes, “The first real parallel of a dying and rising god does not appear until A.D. 150, more than a hundred years after the origin of Christianity. So if there was any influence of one on the other, it was the influence of the historical event of the New Testament [resurrection] on mythology, not the reverse. The only known account of a god surviving death that predates Christianity is the Egyptian cult god Osiris. In this myth, Osiris is cut into fourteen pieces, scattered around Egypt, then reassembled and brought back to life by the goddess Isis. However, Osiris does not actually come back to physical life but becomes a member of a shadowy underworld...This is far different than Jesus’ resurrection account where he was the gloriously risen Prince of life who was seen by others on earth before his ascension into heaven....even if there are myths about dying and rising gods prior to Christianity, that doesn't mean the New Testaments writers copied from them. The fictional TV show Star Trek preceded the U.S. Space Shuttle program, but that doesn’t mean that newspaper reports of space shuttle missions are influenced by Star Trek episodes!” (I Don't Have Enough Faith to be An Atheist, 2004, p. 312).

Dr. Alister McGrath, Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University, says, “Parallels between the pagan myths of dying and rising gods and the New Testament accounts of the resurrection of Jesus are now regarded as remote, to say the least...If anyone borrowed any ideas from anyone, it seems it was the gnostics who took up Christian ideas." (Intellectuals Don't Need God and Other Modern Myths, 1993, p. 121).

Charlie Campbell says, “Zeitgeist claims that Mithra, a mythological Persian deity, was dead for three days and then resurrected. I am no scholar on ancient Mithraism, but nowhere in any of the reading I’ve done on the topic has Mithra’s death even been discussed, let alone Zeitgeist’s story about three days in a grave and a resurrection. Edwin Yamauchi, a historian and author of the 578 page Persia and the Bible concurs. He says, ‘We don’t know anything about the death of Mithras’ (The Case for the Real Jesus, p. 172).”

[stephencastro]

Atheists and especially the makers of Zeitgest are good at this.

Psalms 14:1

"The fool[a] says in his heart,
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt, their deeds are vile;
there is no one who does good."

[kevinlee]

Who does this show I've seen it before with Bro David Bernard