Shocking Comparison of Jesus and Greco-Roman Myths

What does it mean for Jesus to be “deified” in early Christian literature? Although the divinity of Jesus was a topic of profound and contested discussion in Christianity’s early centuries, believers did not simply assert that Jesus was divine; in their literature, they depicted Jesus with the specific and widely-recognized traits of Mediterranean deities. Relying on the methods of the history of religions school and ranging judiciously across Hellenistic literature, M. David Litwa shows that at each stage in their depiction of Jesus’ life and ministry, early Christian writings from the beginning relied on categories drawn not from Judaism alone, but on a wide, pan-Mediterranean understanding of deity: how gods were born, how they acted to manifest power, even how they died----and, after death, how they were taken up into heaven and pronounced divine. Litwa’s samples take us beyond the realm of abstract theology to dwell in the second- and third-century imagination of what it meant to be a god and shows that the Christian depiction of Christ was quite at home there.

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#Jesus #MDavidLitwa #MythVision

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[southerndragonsystem]

I am a former Reverend Professor, left the faith in 92 I found this video very informative loved it.

[FirstOfTheYear]

This stuff is absolutely fascinating. Thanks Derek and Dr. Litwa!

[gregramsey]

I'm relatively new to your channel, but I'm really enjoying the content. I've been studying this concept for years now and find it absolutely fascinating as well as illuminating. Thank you so much!

[MM-jfme]

I love when you have Dr. Litwa as a guest, Derek! I always learn so much from y'all's conversations. Looking forward to checking out Dr. Litwa's books once I've knocked my reading list down a bit.

[PeterFortuna]

Yup. Even as a kid I was into myths. It caused me to have issues with my Sunday school teacher. When I started asking questions....

Great discussion

[AnswersFromJenesis]

I loved this one! I really appreciate how Dr. Litwa does not make huge assumptions or connections but rather just solidly considers the evidence and facts.

I also appreciate the historical context of the Roman and Greek world and their influence in the Jewish world at the time. It is absolutely undeniable and must be taken into consideration.

I would love to hear more from him!

[mogammad]

Kind of makes sense as the earliest known complete manuscripts of the new testament is written in Koine Greek (Vaticanus 350AD)... explains the Hellinistic influence of the authors. . Loved this episode.

[mickey_gnome_s]

Brilliant comparisons between deities. Fascinating.

[laurenjones]

Thank you for your work Dr Litwa. And you too Derek. This channel brings very important ideas and thinkers together. Thanks for answering my questions today. I’m in Australia and it’s rare I’m awake for a super chat.
For anyone interested, the dialogue between Nashiketa and Yama in the underworld is from the Katha Upanishad.
The Popol Vuh is a Mayan creation and hero myth from Guatemala. There is a great animated version on YouTube.
Thanks again.

[kaloarepo]

Catholic artists, poets, composers and sculptors of the early Italian Renaissance had no qualms with integrating the biblical stories with Greco-Roman mythology.Michelangelo depicted the risen Christ clutching his cross, naked and muscular looking more like Apollo or Hercules than the stereotypical Jesus.But surely the most striking example is in literature in an epic poem called the "Christiad" by Girolamo Vida who was actually a bishop.Here all the protagonists of the Christian narrative are seen as Greek-Roman gods.God the father is Jupiter and Christ is his son Apollo, the virgin Mary as the virgin goddess Diana etc etc.The elite of that era were so awe struck by the rediscovery of classical antiquity that they cheered on such depictions and indeed even the rooms of leading cardinals and the popes themselves were painted with depictions of the exploits of the pagan gods.All this changed with the killjoys of the Protestant Reformation and of the Catholic counter Reformation when all this sort of thing was condemned but the pagan past always continued to live on in high European culture inhabiting a parallel universe to the Christian one.

[TereseJames]

Great video! thank you. 40 yrs of studying/researching religions/belief systems and a life long student, you would need 10 lifetimes to grasp it all. So much to learn so little time. I am so glad that there are still humans who direct their attention to things that matter and not stuck in the dark ages, those who view reality tv as reality, those who are stuck in what they want you to be focused on. I dedicate my mornings to learning and prior to that I look at the news on the internet to keep up in that cray cray world and laughed my ass off reading of a ex reality tv star who was selling her farts for money, who thought she was having a heart attack and ended up she had trapped lol oh we are not special as a species. Our makers are laughing or crying.

[johnnehrich]

A question to fundamentalists - if there were all these common and probably shared motifs at that time re divine beings, why wouldn't an all-knowing god have Jesus do and perform totally DIFFERENT feats? Instead of a virgin birth ("been there, done that"), have Jesus first descend to earth in a Glinda-type soap-bubble? Fly like Peter Pan? Have x-ray vision? Water-ski? Preach about germ theory? Serve tomatoes, corn, chocolate, and pineapples at the last supper? Ascend into heaven in a hot air balloon or have angels come get him in a chopper?

[robertherring]

Derek, I have scopes bigger than on your hoodie lol! Love it. Want one! Awesome show! Love Litwa! Does he do Enoch?

[readyfireaim]

The Nag Hammadi Library even includes excerpts from Plato Republic. Another score for Perennial philosophy 👍.

[polkazoochief]

Litwa alluded to this info in the book in previous chats. This has been really neat and timely and explains a lot for me. Thank you both for making this happen.

[bleirdo_dude]

Three reasons why one (not relying on faith) should be agnostic about the claim "Jesus certainly existed".

1) The Gospels/Acts are overflowing with signs of literary fabrication.

"Those who want to find a historical record in Mark face an even greater obstacle than the ambiguous evidence for Mark's literary borrowing of non-Jesus material to create Jesus stories. This obstacle is the fact that if Jesus' earthly ministry actually happened as Mark portrays it, the history of Paul's Gentile mission and the opposition it encountered would be incomprehensible. How could it be that neither Paul nor anyone who worked with him, nor his opponents, knew about Jesus' determined endorsement of a mixed community sharing table fellowship together? How is it that everyone somehow forgot that Jesus explicitly "declared all foods clean (7:19)"? In the pitched battles Paul waged against his Judaizing opponents in his epistles, any one of the many stories about Jesus' conflicts over Law observance would have been devastating evidence of the rightness of Paul's side, yet none are ever mentioned."

Tom Dykstra, Mark, Canonizer of Paul, pp. 229-230

"A raft of scholars, including Randel Helms, Thomas L. Brodie, John Dominic Crossan and others, have shown again and again how this and that Gospel passage likely originated as a Christian rewrite of this or that Old Testament passage."

Thomas L Thompson, Is This Not the Carpenter, pp. 113-114

"Yet, regardless of the difficulty, comparing Luke-Acts and Mark with this verifiable literary antecedent is worthwhile. A key reason is simple: in looking for a literary precedent to the Gospels there is no verifiable pre-Christian text which comes as close to any gospel as the Elijah-Elisha narrative does to Luke-Acts and Mark."

Thomas Brodie, The Crucial Bridge, pp. 97

"While issues with the gospels are certainly not enough to rule out the possibility that there was a historical Jesus behind the gospel story, it also cannot be said with certainty that there must have been one. The lack of primary sources and the problems with the Gospel stories alone, would seemingly justify having some doubt."

Raphael Lataster, Jesus Did Not Exist, Sources: We All Know They're Rubbish - pp. 35/73

"The use of cycles, parallels, repetitions, melodramatic characterization, stereotyped scene construction, inventing or presenting stories that replicate biblical narrative, unbalanced narrative with evident symbolic import, and a balanced structure-all these raise insurmountable objections. History cannot be quite so symmetrical. In addition there are any number of historical problems."

Richard Pervo, The Mystery of Acts, pp. 151

Note: Nowhere in Acts do the authorities show concern that Jesus escaped justice.

"Despite scholarly efforts to detect an underlying Aramaic original for Mark or Matthew, it is probable that all the evangelists wrote in the common (koinē) Greek of their day. Further, the vast majority of Hebrew Bible citations in the New Testament are taken from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (the Septuagint)."

"Large sections of Matthew, Mark, and Luke repeat stories about and sayings of Jesus in nearly identical words. Hence these three Gospels are referred to as the “Synoptic” Gospels. On a linguistic level, both Luke and Matthew improve on Mark’s style, smoothing out inelegant expressions and repetitions. Luke eliminates Mark’s characteristic use of parataxis (one short phrase following another without indicating how they are related) by employing balancing particles and subordinate clauses. Matthew follows Mark’s outline, though the insertion of considerable sections of discourse material may obscure that relationship for the casual reader. Luke knows most of Mark but has no parallels to Mk 6:45–8:26; whether Luke chose to omit this section or had a different version of Mark remains unclear. Detailed analysis of the traditions shared by Matthew, Mark, and Luke provides strong support for the view that Mark provided the template that Matthew and Luke revised, both correcting and smoothing out its language and expanding the Jesus material it contained."

"While the Synoptic Gospels have a close literary relationship, the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, presents a much greater puzzle. Its chronology of Jesus’s ministry differs from that of the Synoptics. In John, Jesus spends three years preaching, during which he journeys between Galilee and Jerusalem; in the Synoptic Gospels, he visits Jerusalem only once, at the end of a ministry that apparently lasted less than a year."

The New Oxford Annotated Bible NRSV, pp. 1380-1381

2) The earliest Xtian writings (Pauline Epistles) are odd when looked at closely. Paul is adamant that his Gospel is not from humans, but from scripture, and visions/dreams (Gal. 1:11-18, Rom. 15:4, 1 Cor. 15:3-8). A secret hidden through the ages now revealed (Rom. 16:25-26, 1 Cor. 2:6-7). Also Paul says his apostleship is by the same means as the founding Pillars (Gal. 2:6-8). Paul's preexisting being was killed for looking like a human (Phili. 2:7), and his killers would not have killed him if they knew it was God's secret plan for mankind's salvation (1 Cor. 2:6-8). This makes more sense when looking at the Joshua/Jesus in the OT who tricks Satan and is exalted by God. Note that these verses have what can be perceived as symbolisms for flesh (dirty clothes= sinful flesh & Five Kings= Five Senses that enslaves one to sin). So Zech. 3:1-9, 6:11-13, & Jos. 10:22-27 together symbolically has a Jesus in a flesh disguise getting hung in a tree, shoved into a tomb, and exalted by God to remove guilt of the land.

Zechariah 3:1-9

"1 Then he showed me the high priest Joshua (Savior) standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan (Adversary) standing at his right hand to accuse him. 2 And the LORD said to Satan, "The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this man a brand plucked from the fire?" 3 Now Joshua was dressed with filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. 4 The angel said to those who were standing before him, "Take off his filthy clothes." And to him he said, "See, I have taken your guilt away from you, and I will clothe you with festal apparel." 5 And I said, "Let them put a clean turban on his head." So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with the apparel; and the angel of the LORD was standing by.

6 Then the angel of the LORD assured Joshua, saying 7 "Thus says the LORD of hosts: If you will walk in my ways and keep my requirements, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here. 8 Now listen, Joshua, high priest, you and your colleagues who sit before you! For they are an omen of things to come: I am going to bring my servant the Branch. 9 For on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven facets, I will engrave its inscription, says the LORD of hosts, and I will remove the guilt of this land in a single day."

Zechariah 6:11-13

11 Take the silver and gold and make a crown, and set it on the head of the high priest Joshua son of Jehozadak (Savior Son of the Righteous God); 12 say to him: Thus says the LORD of hosts: Here is a man whose name is Branch: for he shall branch out in his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD. 13 It is he that shall build the temple of the LORD; he shall bear royal honor, and shall sit upon his throne and rule. There shall be a priest by his throne, with peaceful understanding between the two of them."

Joshua 10:22-27

"22 Then Joshua (Savior) said, "Open the mouth of the cave, and bring those five kings out to me from the cave." 23 They did so, and brought the five kings out to him from the cave, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon. 24 When they brought the kings out to Joshua, Joshua summoned all the Israelites, and said to the chiefs of the warriors who had gone with him, "Come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings." Then they came near and put their feet on their necks. (see Psa. 110:1/Heb. 10:13) 25 And Joshua said to them, "Do not be afraid or dismayed; be strong and courageous; for thus the LORD will do to all the enemies against whom you fight." 26 Afterward Joshua struck them down and put them to death, and he hung them on five trees. And they hung on the trees until evening. 27 At sunset Joshua commanded, and they took them down from the trees and threw them into the cave where they had hidden themselves; they set large stones against the mouth of the cave, which remain to this very day. (see also Deut. 21:22-23/Gal. 3:13)"

3) Verses held up as undeniable evidences for an historical Jesus have plausible alternative explanations. The verse Gal. 4:4b "God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, " looks to have Jesus born of a woman, and is Jewish. But what Paul could mean is that "woman/law" is Divine Wisdom (Greek Sophia personified feminine wisdom/see Prov. 3:13-20, 8:1-36, Baruch 3:37, 4:1) in that Jesus was made all knowing unlike Adam. The verse Gal. 1:19 "but I did not see any other apostle except James the LORD's brother." is seen as a slam dunk for historicity. But Paul's theology is of spiritual kinship (Gal. 4:5-7) and everyone in Christ are brothers/sisters. Paul makes no distinction that this James is blood related to Jesus, and maybe "Lord's brother" is a cultic title? The verse Rom. 1:3b "who was descended from David according to the flesh" (2 Sam. 7:12) is good evidence for historicity. But 2 Sam. 7:12c "who shall come forth from your body, " can mean God made a flesh body from David's semen for Jesus (it was a belief that the male seed contained the whole body). This is a convenient way to fulfill messianic prophecy for a celestial event instead of on Earth.

[zionmarcelo]

yes people should stop using the term 'pagan', it is 'religious racism' or 'religious bigotry'

[aaronlogan_music]

Awesome interview. I need to get his books.

[shannonhenson]

I like this channel...up to a point. Many of the videos are considerably longer than they should be, though. Interesting topics....if you have two hours to sit in front of your computer.