I think Lemmy has a problem with history in general, since most people on here have degrees/training in STEM. I see a lot of inaccurate “pop history” shared on here, and a lack of understanding of historiography/how historians analyze primary sources.
The rejection of Jesus’s historicity seems to be accepting C S Lewis’s argument - that if he existed, he was a “lunatic, liar, or lord,” instead of realizing that there was nothing unusual about a messianic Jewish troublemaker in Judea during the early Roman Empire.
Christianity is like English in that it will appropriate and assimilate words/ideas that help it survive
I mean, I guess… But they stole like, the entire fucking thing from an existing religion. Christianity would not exist without the parts they took from Zoroastrianism.
Didn’t they rip off a lot of Hinduism too?
Uh… how?
The Zoroastrian “borrowing” is more along the lines of there’s a perfect good force versus a perfect evil force.
But I don’t know how there would be any Hinduism influence. There’s lot of Greek influence, but India was really far away.
This is far from the only thing. They also had the concept that everyone has free will to choose between good and evil. I believe they also had a concept of final judgement and heaven/hell (or an analogue).
Were those solely present in Zoroastrianism? From what I understand of Egyptian religion, there’s the whole Thoth “weighing your heart to see if it’s lighter than a feather” thing. I think free will has always been a “popular” idea, but even then, there are passages in the Bible that contradict free will - to the point that Calvinists much later discarded it.
All the similarities to Krishna.
What similarities to Krishna? Please give me some examples, and a plausible explanation of how those ideas would have crossed the continent?
Jesus coming to earth as a human was possibly borrowed from Krishna, who I believe came to earth as an “avatar”.
I think there are other similarities between Jesus and Krishna.
The earliest Christians did not view Jesus as God incarnate. That’s a later development through the second century.
Why Krishna specifically, instead of another avatar of Vishnu like Rama?
How do you explain the transmission of that idea? Are we supposed to imagine something of a “Journey to the East” where mostly illiterate conquered peasants brought back the ideas if not the text of the Bhagavad Gita?
Maybe look into who popularized your idea. The guy who made Zeitgeist also made Loose Change…
They did not steal anything. It’s such a weird take to be out here applying 20th century notions of Intellectual Property to mythology from 2000 years ago. If you approach old world cultures and memetic ecology with reddit catchphrases, you’re just gonna rot your brain. Not worth it.