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Absorbing
 

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The stories were made up, sure. But they weren't made up randomly, they were made up to fit the standard ancient shtick about Gods and souls
Greg.
'Splaining what I mean
This seems like a good place for me to explain what I mean by "myth" and "borrowing."
         Myth is what happens to history when history is thought to carry meaning.
         Borrowing, POCM-speak-wise, is really just "absorbing."

Borrowing , POCM-speak-wise, is really just "absorbing."
Ideas are facts
 When cops at the OJ trial lied, white Americans saw that the colored guy did it, and the lying policeman was a side issue. Black Americans saw another turn of the racist system out to get them. What people saw depended on the ideas they already had in their head.

Your understanding of anything is never just about the raw facts. Your understanding always depends on a thousand connections between the raw facts and your basic ideas about how the world works--in the OJ case, ideas about men and women, marriage, race, crime, police, courts, juries, TV. The truth is, you don't understand anything except in terms of your other basic ideas. That's what "understanding" means -- fitting the raw facts into the ideas you already have.

Back in '95, the only way most people, since none of us laymen had the detailed facts, could understand what OJ did, or didn't, do to Nicole and Ron, was to fit the raw facts to the ideas we already had in our head. Whatever the raw facts, OJ became a nigger with a knife, or a rich man beating the system, or a brother who stuck it to white oppression.

Back in the first and second centuries AD, it worked the same with Jesus. The only way the ancients could understand Jesus was to fit the stories about Him to ideas they already had in their heads. And the ideas they already had were ancient Pagan ideas. Logos-God. Saving wisdom. Miracles. Magic. Prophecies. Heaven, hell, eternal life. Godmen. Whatever the raw facts were, Jesus became a teacher of Gnostic wisdom, a charlatan magician, or a walking talking prophecy fulfilling miracle working eternal life improving Pagan mystery religion godman.

That's what I mean by "borrowing." Christianity borrowed miracles from Paganism," doesn't mean Jesus' miracles were copied, line by line, from Pagan myths. "Christianity borrowed miracles," means early Christians absorbed the idea of miracles from ancient Pagan culture. Like everyone else away back then, Christians understood miracles as an everyday fact of life. Gods (and people tuned in to divine power) did miracles. Jesus was a God (or at least He was tuned into divine power). Naturally, Jesus did miracles.

By the way
Three kinds of borrowing I don't have in mind

Ideas about Christian borrowing have matured over the last century. The discussion sometimes lags the scholarship, so if you've read about Christian borrowing, chances are you have in mind one of these..

1. Cookie-cutter dying and rising god
You may have read somewhere that ancient culture had a recipe for cookie cutter dying and rising god religions, and that Jesus was cut cookie number forty-seven. I doubt He was. I do know the evidence for the dying-and-rising-God recipe is pretty thin. POCM is not about a cookie-cutter dying and rising God Jesus.

By the way
This not-an-event-by-event-copy-of-Pagan-religion business applies to Christianity but not to Judaism. Basic elements of Old Testament Judaism were "fact" by "fact" copies of Paganism.
2. Copycat Jesus
Something else you come across are chains of amazing factual similarities. Godmen born of virgins on December 25th, crucified, rising on the third day, bringing salvation to mankind, etc. etc. The idea being that the facts recorded in the Jesus myth were copied, fact by fact, line by line, from myths about Pagan Gods. One trouble with this theory is, its not true. I mean, the alleged "facts" about the other ancient Gods are not true. They are not found in the ancient sources. They are internet legend. Jesus myths were not copied event by event from Mithras myths.

3. Fictional Jesus
A lot of people, when they hear "Myth," think "Completely made up," and "Fictional." its true some very smart amateur Christian origins writers (like professor G.A. Wells, sort of, and a fellow named Earl Doherty) do think Jesus was fictional. But I don't. Or at least, I'm not sure. I don't think it matters.

 

 

 

Myth is what happens to history when history is thought to carry meaning
When history has meaning, what people care about is the meaning. If something important happened, and someone's telling about it, the facts they tell are the facts that show the meaning.

Pretty soon they're not just picking facts, they're stretching facts. George Washington the boy cut down a tree but 'fessed up, because He Could Not Tell a Lie. Mother Teresa cured cancer with Her Holy Touch. Stone age Aztec cannibals hacking the beating hearts from soft little children were scientists of cardiac physiology, so They Were Our Multicultural Equals.

If the point of a story is the meaning and significance of what happened, then its a good bet the facts have moved around to line up with the meaning. History that carries meaning becomes myth. Myth is history that carries meaning.

This take on "myth" is maybe a bit different from what you're used to. its not a definition of "myth;" it's a statement of objective fact, an observation about how history and myth happen.

By the way    
"Myth," means different things to different people.

Associate professors talk about myth as [shudder] "how cultures express meaning." This let's them talk about something other than that these are fairy tales made up by credulous primitives.

Religious believers may think of myths as. . . fairy tales made up by credulous primitives. Hercules and Zeus. Like that.

Who's right? They both are, the perfessers and the believers. They're looking at different sides of the same fairy tale, trying to work out the meaning of the stories.

By the way
By the way, my take on history and myth is not essential to POCM's claims about Christian borrowing. Even if you don't agree with my keen observations about myth, you can still read POCM and go away with an analysis that works, regardless of how "myth" is understood.  

Lot's of Christ myth chatter is about the meaning of stories about Jesus. I don't care about the meaning of the stories. I care about the history of the ideas in the story. The demons. The miracles. The Greek logos that became one of the Christian Gods. POCM is about how the ideas of ancient Pagan culture flowed into the ancient religion Christianity, and on to your church this Sunday.