...No.
We have references to Roman records from non-contemporary sources. The church has been amassing these for centuries, they're all bullshit.
Jesus may well have existed, but the historical Jesus would not have been anything like the Jesus of the gospels. The story of the gospels is completely plagiarized and significantly older than the Jesus movement.
I don’t know where you got this. But, it’s just as inaccurate now as it was the last time other skeptics, here and elsewhere, brought this up.
The basic facts of Jesus' life as reported in the gospels:
-born in a cave or stable (like all sun gods)
The Gospels do not have Jesus, being born in a cave (you and/or whoever wrote this are stretching things). He was born in a manger. Where are the reports that those other figures were born in a manger?
-born on 25th December (like all sun gods)
I hope you have a chapter and verse for that. And, exactly why would a “sun god” be born in the dead of winter?
-born of a virgin (opposite the Virgo constellation; like all sun gods)
Jesus was. As for the others you mentioned: Horus? Nope!! Osiris? So sorry!! Attis? Try again!!! Hercules and Hercales??? PLEASE!!!! Mithras?? Hardly!!
Pythagoras and Plato?? Both mortals, with regular parents, who produced them the old-fashioned way.
Diana?? A female!!! Enough said!!!
-his birth is attended by three wise magi (magicians; like all sun gods)
There are at least a couple of problems with this blurb:
1) The NT never claims that there were exactly three wise men.
2) The wise men didn’t attend Jesus’ birth; when they found Him, He was about TWO years old (See Matt. 2:7, 16).
-an evil king attempts to have him murdered in infancy and kills many innocents (this is Jewish)
Again, see above.
-he is fully cogniscent of all knowledge by age twelve.
And??? If He’s following the Levitical law, Jesus would not have recognized as a grown man, until age 20. And His ministry didn’t start, until He was around 30.
-he gathers to him 12 disciples (and a concubine fallen woman; the Magdalene... symbolic of the twelve zodiac signs and the hidden thirteenth zodiac sign)
Mary Magdalene was NOT Jesus’ concubine. While on the cross, He tells John to take care of His mother. That is normal procedure in Jewish culture. He was firstborn and unmarried; therefore He took care of His mother and unmarried sisters. Had he been hitched to Mary Mags, He would have commissioned John to take care of her, not His mama. In fact, there is no special provision from Jesus to care for Mary Mags.
-he renames his disciples
Where did this happen again (chapter and verse, please)? The only one that got “renamed” was Peter (Cephas), everyone else had their original first names or were also referenced by their surnames (i.e. identified by their fathers).
-he travels around preaching to crowds
-he heals the sick
-he feeds the masses (usually with fish and bread)
The food was standard fare in that region
-he heals the lame
-he heals the blind
-he raises the dead
-he arrives triumphantly at the capital atop a donkey (a donkey represents the mastered base self)[/quote]
No, a donkey represents……A DONKEY!!!!! Jesus was recorded doing these deeds. Exactly where are Horus, Osiris, Attis, et. al. doing all of that stuff??
-he is betrayed and delivered to a tyrant king
-the king has him crucified (on a cross, tree or T shaped cross)
True of Jesus Christ, not of the other figures, as will be shown below.
-he is buried in a cave or tomb (like all sun gods)
The tomb of Jospeh of Arimithea, who asks for custody of Jesus’ body.
-he rises from the day three days later at Easter time (like all sun gods)
-he appears to his disciples then ascends into heaven. [/quote]
He also appeared to about 500 other folks, according to the apostle Paul, stating on Earth for forty days after His resurrection. And, He resurrects as a grown man, unlike Attis, Horus, and Osiris (who doesn’t resurrect at all but remained in the underworld).
However, all twenty of these facts are exactly the same in the stories of several other pagan mystery religions and equally well apply to:
-Tammuz (the Samaritan messiah)
-Attis (Persian)
-Osiris
-Horus
-Mithras
-Hercules and Heracles
-Apollo
-Diana
-Pythagoras (yes, the mathematician)
-Plato (yes the philosopher... he also became a god)
...most of these messiahs predate the Jesus movement by millenia.
“Exactly the same?” Did you/whoever wrote this actually check the references to these guys/gals, before posting this? Let’s look at some of them:
Attis – He’s the product of Zeus, getting his freak on with the side of a mountain, producing Attis’ father. He ended up getting dismembered, with his penis turning to a tree. That tree produced some fruit, which a virgin put into her lap, resulting in her impregnation with Attis. For some reason, that doesn’t quite match up with the Nativity story.
To top it all off, Attis’ death wasn’t one to provide salvation or redeem mankind. Basically, out of feverish lust over a woman (who may have been his own mama), he chopped off his nuts and bled to death. Exactly like Jesus? I don’t think so.
Horus – The product of a bestiality-necrophilic sex act; specifically, his mama turned herself into a bird and had sex with her dead husband.
Osiris – father of Horus, dismember by Set, who scattered his body into at least a dozen spots. Isis, his wife, found all the pieces, except his Johnson; so, she has to make a new one for him (still dead and in the underworld, BTW), before turning Tweety to do the wild thing.
Herucles/Heracles Both were more bastard sons of the whoremongering Zeus with mortal females.
And that’s just the short list. In summation (and I’ll have to remember where I got this):
- None of the so-called savior-gods died for someone else. The notion of the Son of God dying in place of His creatures is unique to Christianity.
-Only Jesus died for sin. It is never claimed that any of the pagan deities died for sin. As Wagner observes, to none of the pagan gods, "has the intention of helping men been attributed. The sort of death that they died is quite different (hunting accident, self-emasculation, etc.)."
- Jesus died once and for all (Hebrews 7:27; 9:25-28; 10:10-14). In contrast, the mystery gods were vegetation deities whose repeated death and resuscitation depict the annual cycle of nature.
- Jesus' death was an actual event in history. The death of the god described in the pagan cults is a mythical drama with no historical ties.
- Unlike the mystery gods, Jesus died voluntarily. Nothing like the voluntary death of Jesus can be found in the mystery cults.
- And finally, Jesus' death was not a defeat but a triumph. Christianity stands entirely apart from the pagan mysteries in that its report of Jesus' death is a message of triumph.
Early church fathers countered the claims of plagiarism from pagan cults by invoking the doctrine of "Diabolical Mimicry": seems the Devil knew Jesus was coming and he sent all these satanic false messiahs to spread peace, love and understanding before Jesus so that he could undermine the completely original Jesus mission.
I didn't even touch on the homosexual twist to the Jesus movement.
The world needs atheism...
Because………….
Atheism is simply the lack of belief in a supernatural deity. But many who hold the title would be better described as “anti-theists”. They don’t simply have a lack of belief but a distinct disdain for faith (and, often, for people of faith). To paraphrase the word of one pastor,
”Atheists are some of the strangest people. They spend all their lives fighting someone they don’t believe exists”