I think you
here at UCF uh-huh and my question has
to do with the religious history the
religious history and the Mediterranean
and it appears as though the Jesus's bio
as it was was going around the
Mediterranean 4,000 years before him as
well as I mean for example Osiris his
son Horus has pretty much the exact same
bio and I was wondering how you
reconcile your faith and historical
accounts of the time you know I have to
say in all gentleness that that's just
based on misinformation this is this is
garbage that spread on the internet that
just isn't true and what's really funny
about this is that these people who say
this kind of thing never seem to quote
the primary sources they tell you that
this is in Osiris and or Horus but you
never see the primary sources quoted
when you look at the primary sources you
find out they're not at all parallel to
the Gospels and this movement to try to
explain Jesus of Nazareth and and
Christianity against the backdrop of
pagan mythology greco-roman and other
religions was very popular back around
the late 1800s or so it was in in
Germany and the movement soon collapsed
for two reasons one was that when you
examine the primary sources closely they
weren't really parallel the parallels
were spurious there's nothing comparable
for example to the resurrection of Jesus
in pagan religions secondly in any case
there was no causal connection between
these two between these myths and Jesus
of Nazareth are the earliest disciples
in fact one of the things that has
characterized contemporary scholarship
about the historical Jesus is what has
been called the Jewish reclamation of
Jesus what has happened is that New
Testament scholars have come to
understand that Jesus of Nazareth was a
Jew and all of the disciple
we're Jews and that therefore it is
against the backdrop of first century
Palestinian Judaism that Jesus is to be
properly understood not against the
background of pagan mythology and pagan
religion and so what scholars have come
to appreciate is this earlier approach
fact in the late 1800s which is
completely wrongheaded because it didn't
understand the Jewishness of Jesus and
when you read Jesus against a Jewish
milieu the credibility of the Gospels
has been tremendously enhanced and this
is as I say a movement that is in part
being spearheaded by Jewish scholars and
historians and I spoke with James
Crosley at the University of Sheffield a
couple of years ago about this Jewish
reclamation of Jesus and I said why do
you think it was that this approach to
Jesus in German theology use this this
pagan mythology as the interpretative
grid for Jesus why it was so obviously
wrong and he said it was because of a
German anti-semitism and all of a sudden
the light just sort of went on for me I
thought oh man this is exactly the same
sort of anti-semitism that led to
National Socialism in Germany right up
through the Second World War they wanted
an Aryan Jesus they didn't want a Jewish
Jesus and so New Testament theology was
D routed into this this interpreting
Jesus and the framework of these pagan
religions which is a total distortion of
who Jesus really was so I would
encourage you you you should just divest
yourself of this this point of view it's
utterly outmoded among scholars there's
a very good article that I can refer you
to on this it's by Mark Forman and it's
going to be in the volume called come
let us reason which is being edited by
myself and Paul Cohan with Broadman and
Holman it's coming out probably in a
month or two and Mark has a wonderful
analysis of the zeitgeist movie have you
heard of that movie zeitgeist it makes
this claim about Horace and
Gyptian religion and and mark Forman
just takes this to pieces I mean it's a
piece of theological and historical
dismantlement so look at Foreman's piece
if you don't believe me and and and and
see if it doesn't if what I've said
isn't correct