K
kenofken
Guest
What you’re asking for is essentially impossible for anyone to provide. You’re asking for definitive proof that something DIDN’T happen at any point over centuries for which we have very little primary source material. How is anyone going to establish that none of the countless Christian theologeons and writers drew no influence from earlier pagan ideas? And if they did, why would that diminish the message for you? If the Christ story does share parallels or even derive from earlier souces, couldn’t that mean that the underlying message is of timeless importance for our species?
About the best you can hope for is to find some authors who can argue that Christianity is in some ways fundamentally revolutionary in its thinking and that its mythology is fundamentally different. But again, you’re likely to find that those are fairly involved in technical language.
As to the second question, how do you “know” Jesus was a historical figure or that he was as the church says? Primary evidence for that too is pretty thin, to say the least. If it’s something you take on faith, why do the pagan parallels trouble you so? To your final point, pagans are all over the map as to how literally we take the accounts of the gods. We know they’re real because they come to our ritual space. Most of them have been known to take human form or sire human offspring, but they are not claimed as a general matter to have lived on this plane as you and I and Jesus are purported to…
