Author: kevingdrendel

I am sixtiesh, an English Literature major in college and an attorney by profession. Faith informs my life, and this blog is about my faith journey.

Was the Jesus Story a Copycat from Pagan Myth?

Is the Jesus story just is an amalgam of pagan myths?

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The answer is pretty decisively, no! Much has been said of this popular Internet opinion by actual historians and biblical scholars of every stripe, Christian, agnostic, and atheist. Very few, if any, scholars who have proven themselves in the world of academia and who have been vetted by peer reviews, hold to this view. It’s an odd exception that finds a lot popular acceptance among the self-initiated.

This is true whether the scholar happens to be a theist or atheist, believer or nonbeliever. There simply isn’t any credible evidence for it. The only evidence lives in the active imaginations of people who want it to be true, like Bill Maher. Of course, he even did a movie about it.

While many people have published articles, lectures, and videos on the subject, I appreciate this one I have embedded below by Steven Bancarz, who was, until somewhat recently, not a Christian. In fact, he was a New Age adherent. Not only that, he was considered an expert on New Age religion with a robust YouTube channel devoted to New Age thought and a regular contributor to the largest New Age website on the Internet.

Steven now exposes the spurious nature of the New Age world he once championed and denounces it after his conversion to Christianity. (From New Age to Jesus – My Testimony) He spends his time researching Christian and non-Christian sources on various subjects that once occupied his mind as a New Age follower.

Steven Bancarz once believed the opposite to what he now believes to be true. Therefore, he brings with him the mindset of a once skeptic. That approach results in a certain freshness and clarity that I appreciate. I recommend the following video on this popular notion that the resurrection story was copied from pagan myth:

The Rose and the Thistle

We live with the duality of being born of the flesh and born of the spirit

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Depositphotos Image ID: 4468140 Copyright: Estea-Estea

“Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”[i]

This quotation by Frances Hodgson Burnett is pretty profound when you think about it. A person cannot feed love and feed hate at the same time. One displaces the other, like light displaces the darkness.

Except, we know from our own experience that we can love and hate at the same time. It’s just that we cannot love and hate the same thing at the same time. This is what the quotation is saying: a rose and a thistle cannot occupy the same space, though roses and thistles can certainly stand side-by-side. We can love one person and hate another.

Jesus puts a twist on these thoughts when he says that a person cannot serve two masters. When two priorities are vying for position in our hearts, they cannot both occupy the top position: “Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”  And Jesus provides us a ready example: “You cannot serve both God and money.”[1]

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God Lets Us Choose Him

If we encountered God “face to face” in our daily lives and if God was so evident in creation that we could not deny him, we would not have free will.

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Depositphotos Image ID: 31693997 Copyright: DesignPicsInc

In back-to-back chapters in the Gospel of John (8, 9 and 10), Jesus has conversations with Jewish crowds who question who he is. Jesus never tells them in direct words, “I am God,” but the crowd clearly knows what he is talking about. This is similar to what we experience in life.

The world is made in such a way that it is governed by natural laws that have existed since the beginning of time. The cosmological constants were set from the beginning and are so finely tuned that they could not be changed this way or that way, even the slightest bit, without negating the possibility of life on Earth. Many scientists look at these laws and draw the conclusion that either they have always existed or they are simply all there is.

But where did the laws come from? Where did the universe come from? There is plenty of other evidence that God, the Creator, exists. The cosmological constants do not eliminate the possibility of a God. In fact, if those constants had a beginning, they must have had a beginner. But, there is room to question and to dismiss the idea.

Many of the Jewish people at the time of Jesus, especially the influential leaders, questioned who Jesus claimed to be.  Jesus did not get in their face about it. Just like God does not reveal himself in the created Universe in a way that we could not ignore him, Jesus was subtle, but clear.

I find this to be fascinating. It reveals a deep thread that has been coming into focus for me going way back in time.

God created us with free will. If he was in our face, we would have no free will. He would overwhelm and overcome us if we could not ignore Him.

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Appearances and Realities

God judges the heart, and God alone. He weighs our motives

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Depositphoto Image ID: 141475556 Copyright: SIphotography

My son posted an article written by a young woman who was chastised by an older woman for wearing holy jeans in church. She was accused of being disrespectful to God. I am reminded of the charge Jesus made against the Pharisees about being whitewashed tombs.[1] They looked good and clean on the outside, but they were empty on the inside.

We are good at making ourselves look good on the outside, but that isn’t what counts.

Jesus was pretty clear when he told us that we should stop judging by appearances.[2] How did this elderly woman know that the young church attendee was disrespecting God? God judges the heart,[3] and God alone.[4] He weighs our motives.[5] The people who look good to us, may be anything but good[6], and the opposite is certainly true as well.

It’s no wonder that millennials are leaving the church in big numbers. If this older woman represents what is important to the average churchgoer today, the Pharisees are still leading the way in religious circles.

The thing is that human nature in the 1st Century is the same as human nature in the 21st Century.

We live with an illusion that we are somehow more enlightened, less barbaric and more advanced than our ancient counterparts. We want to believe that we have made progress over time and are getting better. We don’t stone people to death for moral crimes anymore (at least in many countries). Activists parade in the public square today to support human rights rather than gathering in the public square to watch executions (in many countries anyway). But we shouldn’t ignore the signs that suggest a different narrative.

More people were killed by genocidal rulers in the 20th Century than in all the previous centuries combined. Look at the awful number of people killed in Chicago alone by handguns every week, month and year. We don’t burn babies on the outstretched arms of Molech anymore; we tear them limb from limb in the womb. In many countries around the world, we still stone people to death, cut off their limbs, burn their faces and even through homosexuals off of roofs with the sanction of social and governmental blessing.

Appearances are deceiving.

Continue reading “Appearances and Realities” →