Early Instances of Christian Elements: Borrowings, Anticipations or Satanic Mockery?

inkorrekt writes:Christianity did not borrow anything from anyone.

Chiroptera writes:Well, except for the bit about a god being born of a virgin to be a sacrifice for the world. And the part about the Supreme Being being an omnipotent, omniscient, perfect being.

ramoss writes:And the concept of "Satan"
We must also not forget that the terms "Savior" and "Salvation' were political statements, because those are the terms that Ceasar Agustus gave himself, being the 'divine son of God', who 'brought salvation to the roman empire'.

Faith writes:Christianity "borrowed" the concept of "Satan?" From whom? I suppose "Savior" and "salvation" had political implications, all right, but they were directly taken from the Old Testament too, just as "Satan" was also in the OT, not manufactured for the purpose if that's what you are implying. God Himself calls himself the Savior in many passages. And you of course deny it, but The Messiah was prophesied to BE God Himself in the flesh, so to call Him the Savior was simply in keeping with the ancient prophecies.

Faith writes: This is off topic, as was Ramoss' post, which I just answered, but I think it needs some explanation. I know of no other religion where any god was actually born of a virgin. The "virgin" was no longer a virgin by the time of the birth -- or the conception for that matter.And how does one "borrow" the idea of an omnipotent omniscient perfect God who was known to all people at one time?

Sargon is perhaps the first Babylonian king who was said to have a larger-than-life birth and childhood. He was born in secret to a mother of lowly birth and a father who was a mountain god. In a motif which would later be borrowed and attributed to Horus and Moses, Sargon's mother placed the child in a basket of rushes and sent him down a river to protect him from the god's enemies. The babe was rescued downstream by simple folk and the goddess Ishtar loved and guided Sargon through his early childhood and to his final destiny: the ascension of the throne. Sargon's biography started a "tall tale" tradition that subsequent kings felt the need to match. The attribute of divine birth and predestination became an important vehicle whereby a mortal king was said to be god-favored; gaining recognition and power during his life which often continued into posterity long after death.By 1000 BCE, we find this tradition improved upon so that the biography of kings and important men insist that they were not only divinely born, but said to have transcended death to become gods themselves. Zoroaster, the Persian prophet and patriarch who lived and preached in ancient Babylon, was said to have been God-begotten and virgin born. Virgin-birth was the responsibility of the Ishtar priestesses, who conducted fertility rites, prophesied and performed elaborate rituals in the temples throughout Babylon. The priestesses who administered the temples also managed a lucrative prostitution business that provided a steady stream of financial support for temple activities. Upon their return to Palestine, Hebrews of the Babylonian captivity brought back to the Mediterranean peoples wondrous tales of the priestesses and their blasphemous sexual ministries to the men who visited them. The role of the Ishtar priestess was to act as both mother to the prospective man's child and minister to the child's divine needs:"Holy Virgin" was the title of harlot-priestesses of Ishtar (and) Asherah. The title didn't mean physical virginity; it meant simply "unmarried." The function of such "holy virgins" was to dispense the Mother's grace through sexual worship; to heal; to prophesy; to perform sacred dances; to wail for the dead; and to become Brides of God."[1]The Hebrews called the children of these priestesses bathur, which meant literally "virgin-born" as in those children who were born of the holy harlot-priestesses of the temple. The Hellenic world had no equivalent to the bizarre rituals of Ishtar, and mistranslated and misunderstood the literal Hebrew's bathur as parthenioi, also "virgin-born" but in the sense of physical, not spiritual, virginity.

Zeus was said to have impregnated Danae by visiting her as a ray of sunlight and the dove, sacred to Ishtar, manifests itself as a Holy Ghost to impregnate Mary and announce Jesus as the son of God.

Lot of assertions in your quotation, no real support for any of it --Dates, sources etc.

When a lesser god impregnates a human woman, normally the ensuing birth is not a virgin birth, as the god is a finite being, built like a man, and impregnation is done the same way humans do it. There is no comparison with the operations of the omnipresent invisible Holy Spirit in the conception of Jesus. So more has to be said to justify this notion in relation to other religions.

Zoroaster, the Persian prophet and patriarch who lived and preached in ancient Babylon, was said to have been God-begotten and virgin born.

Parthenoi was the Greek word chosen to translate "almah" from the famous text in Isaiah into the Greek Septuagint a few hundred years before Jesus, by orthodox Jewish scholars, hardly to be accused of hellenistic influences.