Myths: more than silly stories
Getting started

Jesus healing the sick
with a magic wand.

 

 

Our Jesus stories are not fact for fact copies of ridiculous Pagan stories. Early Christians used Pagan ideas to invent their own ridiculous "facts."
Greg

 

If you think POCM is not just wrong but irrationally stupid, this page is for you. I've noticed from my email that folks who really really don't like what POCM says often don't actually understand what POCM says. My fault. Failure to communicate. Let me fix that here.

What conservatives bring to POCM
Folks whose Christian belief is conservative arrive here knowing Jesus is important because of экскурсии в особняк Кельха what happened in history. Our gospels are first hand histories written by people who talked and ate and slept with the historical Jesus. The facts of Jesus' life prove His divinity, prove the meaning of His life, prove our salvation. For many Christians facts, gospel facts, are the fundamental, irreducible unit of our Jesus stories.

On account of which when believers hear "Christian - Pagan borrowing" what they see is our gospel writers lifting facts—events— from Pagan stories. They see Luke, reed pen in hand, Gospel of Horus open on the desk, copying born on December 25th. Copying virgin mother. Copying crucified. Like that.

The idea is preposterous. Our gospel writers knew Jesus personally, knew He was a Jew not a Pagan, and we're supposed to believe they ignored their first hand experience and put in stories about Horus? What, are you nuts? And anyway, the Pagan stories are always different, in some detail, from the Christian history. Greg is irrationally stupid. POCM may be the most dishonest web site on the internet.

"Slept" in the sense of "slumbered," not slept in the biblical sense. Except or course we're talking about the bible, so in that sense in the biblical sense, but not in the other one.

How POCM's theory is different
On account of the literalists' facts about Jesus aren't facts after all, POCM doesn't start with the conclusion that the fundamental unit of our Jesus stories are the "facts" in the stories.

Instead POCM starts with the ancient Pagan texts, with the observation that ancient Mediterranean Pagan culture was full of stories about magic dreams, prophecies, miracles, angels, demons, and walking, talking, salvation bringing sons of God. The building blocks of Pagan religion look familiar.

The other thing POCM observes is, the facts in Pagan stories didn't come in random jumbles. Pagan story tellers put their invented "facts" together in ways that had purpose, logic and meaning. One example. Godmen had miraculous births. Miraculous birth was a sign of specialness. So if you wanted to show that a real historical person was special— Alexander the Great, say, or the emperor Augustus, or Romulus, or Scipio Africanus—you made up a story about how their birth was miraculous and divine. POCM's theory is that when we peel back the "facts" and get to the purpose, we see that Christian purpose and Pagan purpose was generally the same. Christian purpose is Pagan purpose. Christianity is a product of its time and place.

POCM is about what the myths themselves are about: purpose, logic and meaning. The virgin birth of Jesus was not copied, fact by fact, from Horus or Mithras or Alexander. The "facts" in each of those Pagan myths were different. What they all shared was logic and purpose: Here's how the great man / divine man got his divinity. A divine being brought it to him down from the sky.

If you're not interested or able to see the question that way, POCM will waste your time. Click away.

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Prayer at the altar of Dionysus
connected you to the divine creator of the universe.

Our souls are divine, and strive for union with God. After we die we travel to heaven to spend eternity contemplating the unutterable, indescribable glory of God. That  was ancient religion.

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Getting
POCM isn't POCS, the Pagan Origins of the Christ Story. The early Christians didn't come up with Jesus' stories by copying facts from other ancient Gods' stories. Jesus is not Mithras with a new name sticker. The early Christians came up with their Jesus "facts" by inventing new stories that wound around ancient (Pagan) purposes. God in the sky, sending His son to Earth. Miracle power. Healing. Raising the dead. Eternal life. POCM has pages explaining each of these Pagan theologies, and more.

To get POCM, you need to see more than the "facts" in the stories. You need to see the purposes that led myth makers to invent those particular "facts."

Powerful benefits
Seeing this two level connection isn't just fun, it's helpful at sorting out what the connections are. We're looking not just for similar facts, we're looking for similar back story.

Virgin Birth: I bet if you google "copycat Jesus" you come up with dozens of people out to convince you Jesus isn't a "copycat" Pagan God. One way they know is, Jesus' virgin birth is unique.

One fellow puts it so    >>

In almost all of the pagan parallels, a god or a goddess has sexual intercourse with the woman/goddess. ...One fact, among many, which has seemed to escape the minds of the 'pagan parallel proponents' (say that three times fast), is that after sexual intercourse, you are no longer a virgin!

R. Burton

POCM's take on Jesus birth is a bit different. The back purpose of ancient father-a-God, mother-a-mortal divine birth stories—myths—was to rationalize a godman. Divinity and divine powers from Pa. Humanity from Ma. The ancients made up their stories accordingly. Virginity not needed. Jesus' birth fits that back purpose. Godness from the Holy Spirit. Humanity from Mary. That's how the ancients saw it. Shucks, that's how we  see it.

And virgin? Also Pagan back story. The births of Pagan godmen were foretold with divine prophesies. So was Jesus'. The gospel writers knew this must be true. And sure enough, when they went rooting through the Old Testament, there it was. God (they though Isaiah said) would send a messiah, son of a young maiden. Hebrew "maiden" got translated into Greek as "virgin." How about that.

Chances are you wouldn't see all this if you didn't know about the Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth.

(If you think this is cool, you'll maybe like these two back stories, spell and cup, over at Pagan Ideas > Miracles.)

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