one of the classic objects to religion is that atheist say that the stories of Jesus Mary the virgin along with other things come from the anicent religions like the Egyptians Babylonians have stories that are a part of our christian religion. The athesist think that becuase we “steal” those stories or we have the same stories i can’t possibly be true meaning all religion is not true meaning there is no good.
what do you think is a good way to reject this argument?
I think you explain the connections as ways God reveled himself through history.
If some ancient religion had a myth that a guy who was divine in nature, came to teach in the world, then sacrificed himself for a group of people.
or a story along the lines of that.
I think that is difficult to present in a convincing way. The Hebrew Bible has this long tradition of prophets and prophecy, a kind of “prophetic culture” that claims – and I think the Catholic Church’s belief is that Christianity extends and builds on top of this – that God speaks prophetically in distinct ways. God, per Romans, is immanent in such a way in the world that (allegedly) “all men are without excuse” as to God’s reality and sovereignty, but this is not to say that God is catalyzing prophecies off willy-nilly.
These people you say are really prophets of God, they don’t act like prophets, and the rest of what they say and do…
I think that’s a problem.
Better to just note that sacrifice isn’t an idea
invented with Christ (or Abraham/Isaac if you want to brink it that far back), but is rather an idea
perfected in Christ (and foreshadowed by Abraham/Isaac). All the other pagan impulse to self-sacrifice and ‘salvation’ brought by the sacrifice of the noble one or many, this isn’t prophecy per se, but a very dim glimmer of the
imago dei that exists in all men, and which bursts into a blindingly bright light in the crucifixion of Christ.
Something like that.
Instead of the story of Jesus being a spin off of this Myth, the Myth is a prophecy of what is to come in Jesus, just like many of the OT stories.
As above, I think prophecy is the wrong concept to advance here, per above.
these stories will appear in history because God who is a perfect being who created the universe has a pattern in his creation meaning that stories will appear multiple times in history even if just as myths.
any problems with my argument?
It’s pretty convenient, easily dismissed as ad-hoc. If “sacrifice” is a deep and powerful theme in human psychology, then we would expect to see such stories, and mythic amplifications. We would not be surprised to see cults emerge around that idea, particular apocalyptic cults.
That fits with the idea of Jesus as the apotheosis of this idea, the perfect sacrifice, and that all the other “noise” is so much foreshadowing and subliminal premonition of Jesus as the Lamb, but the counter-case fits well too: sacrifice is an important meme, and here’s one where the story took on a mythic and legendary life of its own.
If’s not structural broken or anything, it just doesn’t strike me as one people will find persuasive one way or the other.
-TS
