Yahweh Inspired FALSE Religions to Prepare for Jesus?? (feat. Dr Dennis MacDonald) 

SIGN-UP FOR THE COURSE! www.tinyurl.com/GreekMacDonald READING THE GOSPELS WITH ONE EYE ON GREEK POETRY with Professor Dennis R. MacDonald

It kinda astonishes me that someone can look at a later figure with a ton of influences from past figures and legitimately try to make the argument "no you see my figure made the previous ones to strengthen his own case." Feels about as convincing as a plagerist making the argument "no you see, a time traveler stole my work and traveled back with it"

I’ve heard my brother say that it was actually Satan inspiring false deities with similar attributes before Jesus so that way it would be harder to believe in Jesus later on 😂

Story that came later resembles story that came earlier. Normal people: "Oh, I guess the later story took inspiration from the earlier one, happens all the time." Apologists: "DID GOD MIRACULOUSLY INSPIRE THE EARLIER STORY TO PREPARE US FOR THE LATER ONE?!???!1?!"

Listening to J. Warner Wallace, I keep visualizing Graham Hancock asking, "Is it possible that all these myths descend from an earlier, lost civilization? Or are they evidence of alien visitors, teaching early humans about the gods?"

i love how yahweh went back in time and made better mythology to prepare us for his mythology where he's the villain of his own story so we know how true it is

"My Jesus brings all the boys to the yard And they're like, he's better than yours Damn right he's better than yours He can teach you, but he has to charge"

Been saying it for years: fanfic evolved from religion and mythology

It's amazing that I never considered this aspect of theistic stories. That Jesus was 'a better version' of previous heroes is fascinating.

Instant like! As a former fundo christian, this is almost exactly how I processed ancient deity myths.

This was a masterpiece Paul! It's wonderful that you had Dennis translate into a cartoon. In the end, may we all become a cartoon/deity 😝

Why does J Warner Wallace call Zoroaster a "god" rather than a prophet, as he is normally referred to? Loved Dr Dennis MacDonalds commentary, I really enjoyed how he was not just looking at what Wallace said, but also what he did NOT say and the visual framing around it. Combined with Pauls more down to earth analogies it worked really well! I hope we see this team up again in the future.

The thing that actually got me to really question my faith was taking a world religions course in college. It was actually taught by an active Episcopal priest. Learning about the earlier religions that Christianity borrowed from was really hard for me to reconcile with what I had been taught in Church.

I believe you have proven your point. I hope Christian's understand why they should be careful of what they believe in the future.

I haven’t seen apologists ever discuss the fact that the gospel of John claims that Jesus is the “Logos” a word that gets translated as “the word,” which most lay Christians assume is referring to the scripture. Logos was a deified, anthropomorphic form of the laws of nature and logic, but took on the characteristics of a demiurge in Hellenistic Judaism. All this to say, you can very clearly see early Christianity baking pre-existing Greek philosophy into their Christology.

If jebus even existed he was nothing more than a first-century Galilean cult leader. And there seem to be many roaming around the Galilee and Judea in the first century CE.

Older myths: “My god is divine level 500!” “Well, this new god is divine level 1000!” Yahweh: “My divine level is over 9000!” Jesus: “I’m divine times infinity!” Allah: “I’m divine times infinity plus one” Christians: “Fake copycat” Mormons: “here’s some new information about Jesus” Christians: “fake copy cat”

Paul, you need a new jingle to use in future videos. "My god's better than your god", to the tune of the old dog food ad. Same increased tempo and instrumentation as the "For the Bible tells me so" jingle. I'm sure you'd find plenty of uses for it!

Led Zeppelin didn't rip off all of those blues artists. They were just getting us ready for the genius of Page and Plant.

They make me laugh (or maybe cry!) “When Jesus turns the water into wine ……”. No! “When Jesus ALLEGEDLY turned the water into wine.”

What an incredible dive into literary criticism. I really appreciate the detailed, side by side comparisons between the Odyssey and Mark and how the author of Mark drew upon this classic work. Dr. DM does persuade one to his point of view.

Wallace is a _worker_ , a carney who works those who so desperately want to hear that some _smart_ guy reifies their beliefs. How can anyone who knows ancient mythology declare that "Jesus" was intended to be the perfect instance of all those ancient myths, and *therefore* must be the *true* god?

This was very eye opening. I was aware that many similar ideas of gods and godlike figures were around the Mediterranean, but not the kind of comparable and competitive identity-building narratives as discussed by MacDonald here. It's very interesting, and much more reasonable than Wallace's claim that appears to be that God inspired dozens of people in at least one part of the world to tell similar stories (specifically the ones with which the gospel authors would most likely be familiar) in order to prime audiences to be more receptive to Jesus's real story. Should we not also see that, on listing all known story elements of ancient cultures and performing a minimally biased analysis (trying not to make the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy) on which story elements are common and to what extent they are clearly depicted, find that they are all embodied by Jesus and not just more similar if they are from closer places and times? How do the stories of Jesus compare with Mayan, Inuit, Maori, Japanese, and Indonesian traditions for example?

Sadly these apologists don't have to convince us atheists of their ridiculous claims, only those folks who are intellectually disabled by their faith. It reminds me of the old joke about the assistant wildlife photographer. It's his first job and he gets sent to the Serengeti to photograph lions along with a much older and more experienced photographer. The lions get restive and the new assistant is surprised to see the old hand reach into his bag and slip into a pair of running shoes. Despite the scary circumstances, the assistant has to say something. "I don't think you're going to outrun a lion!" he scoffs. "Oh I don't have to outrun a lion, I only have to outrun you..." is the response.

Ive recently found dr macdonalds work and I guess i could use the warm my heart type language to describe my feelings to it. This methodology of reading early christian literature brings new life into the text that no christian has ever been able to do for me. Truly makes the work as beautiful as the rest of the ancient world and places it in its proper context as early mythology. Very fascinating stuff from an antropological standpoint

Very fascinating from your guest speaker here. Now, this isn't particularly religiosity related. But I always wonder a bit at the "Universality of human experience and storytelling". A simple compare and contrast I like to use, because I'm familiar with the stories? East vs West. Particularly looking at Japan, China, Korea, etc. Their own stories also have a heavy leaning into social status and fate, bloodlines and the status of birth. A lord is a lord is a lord, meant to be so and is a lord because they were assigned that status by fate before they ever were born. While often western literature focuses primarily on virtue based on personal actions. Yes King Arthur is the son of the former King... but he wields his power, achieves his status, and maintains his position because he embraces the virtues seen as that of a noble ruler. When he stops acting like a noble ruler, his power and status fails him. There's a bigger difference I find between various cultures, and their beliefs and world views than a synchronism between them. Yes it's easy to look at related cultures (like the Levant, Greece, and Egypt, who do share historical backgrounds and cultural influences) and pick out similarities. It's far harder to say, hear the myths and stories of the Chinook people (a native tribal culture in the Pacific Northwest of North America) and say that's exactly like Catholic Rome. Maybe it's just me, but when I find most people make those comparisons, it's how it goes. It seems like J Warner Wallace did that. He compared Hellenic and Persian sources to Jewish and eventually Christian, all culturally influential and intermingled places. He's not talking about how say, Vishnu from India was totally set to prepare the sub continent for the arrival of Christian Missionaries with the colonization of the sub continent. Or how Amaterasu in Japan was set up to prepare Japan for the arrival of Portuguese Missionaries. And considering the sheer social upheaval that their presence actually caused in Japan... if so, they did a very piss poor job of it as it didn't "Prepare" them for it but lead to riots and revolts. Edit: Because well... if there was an all powerful all knowing all good divine figure leading such things... I would expect that he'd have a bigger scope than even one planet, big universe out there. But even on the scope of a single planet, would you know, cover the entire planet and not just a single set of closely related geographic regions which had constant contact with each other, but not those outside of it.

"See my fanfiction is true because everything about my character was supported in the prophecy of Mr Grey!" Me: That's nice, might read it later.

This was absolutely amazing! Dr. MacDonald is an absolute treasure; I learned several new things watching y'all. This was an extremely powerful, technical, and competent critique, and now I'm really excited to watch his course! Thank y'all! 😀👍🐧🐧 (Also, the existence of apologetics kinda debunks the whole ideology, because if the Bible is an errant, or inspired by a god, why do we need these people to clarify so much of it? So many non-scholarly books, and let's be honest, so many lies and misrepresentations. So yeah, the existence of apologists & apologetics kinda debunks the very ideas that the apologists are trying to convince you of. Also, most of them do it with zero irony or self-awareness, which shows me that the vast majority of Christian apologists are grifters, taking advantage of a gullible and undereducated group of Christians who are desperate to hold on to their faith.)

All of this reminded me that growing up Catholic in a Mexican family Our Lady of Guadalupe was everywhere and it wasn't until I deconverted at 24 when I started to accept that maybe she came from an Aztec goddess by the name of Tonantzin, I found the borrowing from other mythologies to be a bit fascinating

“Not anti-religious it’s anti-stupidity” that’s all I want from my scholars

I too whole-heartedly endorse being 100% on the anti-stupidity crusade!

As a regular worshipper of Dionysys/Baccus I take issue with the title. When I participate in a celebration of fermented grain & fruit, I feel the presence of great spirits, & see beautiful angels!

The word "pagan" honestly seems pretty reductive to me. Christians and Jews get to be called by their title, but followers of any other belief systems are now just "pagans" instead of being called by their proper titles. Now I'm tempted to swap it around and call the rest by their proper titles, but Christians and Jews are now "pagans". See how people like that.

Every time I hear some new bit from Wallace, I get a little more embarrassed that I once viewed him as one of the less absurd apologists. It was pretty early in my walk away from faith, I listened to a lot of podcasts at the time, one of them was Wallace's. Within a years or so of starting to listen I was becoming a little confused, because his stuff seemed to be getting worse and worse with time, then I went back over his catalogue, to episodes I remembered enjoying, and found those to also now be absurd. It's an odd feeling, remembering that something used to make sense to you, but looking back you can't for the life of you remember how.

I'm impressed with JWW. Such a well-spoken, well-turned out specimen. I wonder what he does for a living.

I really wish I had more time to watch the full MVP courses. Unfortunately, I’ve already committed myself to so much professional Continuing Education over the next 18 months (plus my own teaching commitments), I’m just grateful for see smaller videos here and on MythVision.

I LOVE this episode! I once read The Christ Conspiracy by Acharya S, which covered a large majority of the evolution of Jesus's legend. This channel keeps my love of biblical scholarship aflame! 💖

Don't get me wrong..I'm here watching just like everyone else, but there's a talking snake!?! Shouldn't every paulogia episode just be: "I'm Paulogia, there's a talking snake. Good night."

It must be a bitch to watch J W Wallace put a puzzle together. 'Okay... this part goes here... here.. yes... this puzzle is obviously about Jesus entering Jerusalem!' 'Uh... it's a kitten on a bed of flowers.'

Isn't it telling that all the most similar religions developed near each other? Near enough that you could get this cross pollination of stories and tropes? Would it not make more sense if there was a universal god that all religions all over the world would share some distinct characters?

I’m a longtime fan of the Jesus Seminar and people like John Dominic Crossan, but McDonald’s work adds enormous insight into how the Gospels were written. I have certainly heard of parallels in mythology with regards to the resurrection, but McDonald is demonstrating that there are several other NT examples that have their artistic origins in Greek and OT poetry. To me this is a great insight that evangelicals need to recon with, but don’t expect this to happen very soon and don’t expect them to take away the same humanist interpretation that McDonald brings to the table. Rather, I believe that Wallace has a head start on how evangelicals will interpret these findings, if that happens at all. And I don’t expect Wallace to change his mind any time soon either. In fact, my guess is that evangelicals will reject Wallace’s interpretation before they ever alter their own understanding of the Bible as the inerrant word of God.

Let’s hope he was a better detective, than he is apologist! Religious apologists will stop at nothing to mislead and deceive, they don’t mind that they are liars, they don’t mind that they are boring, they don’t mind that they are obviously ignorant and wrong - because most of the people they are fooling are either children or needy, naive, gullible people.

Wow that was eye-opening

The guy knows some of those religions predated Christianity, right?

I too am all for anti stupidity! Well done good sir

Yikes! JWW looked at all the right stuff... UNFORTUNATELY he was wearing his xian glasses the whole time. The denial is strong with this one! Dr. McDonald really pointed out the shortfalls.

The nice thing about gods, is that you can mold them to whatever narrative you like.

This was a fantastic episode 👍🏻

Great guest, thank-you!

My dad said it was the devil that inspired all of the other religions with parallel themes to his own religion. I wonder who's right?

What an excellent interview! Thank you!

Nice explanation of the mise-en-scene of J Wobbly Wallace’s set. What a charming, avuncular and learnéd gentleman. Thanks for the introduction, Mr Ogia.

This was a very interesting look at the alignment between the stories. Thank you.

Wallace is not to be taken seriously no matter how seriously he takes himself.

what a great guest, prepared slides and everything

Love this! Dr. MacDonald is awesome!

Glad i stayed till the end, great closing statement by your guest.

Paul i really enjoyed this topic its a nice departure from your regular content.

Great to see Prof MacDonald! Thanks for another excellent video Paul.

you're on a roll. love these critiques. I listen to them on my walks and always learn something.

Big supporter, good work!

This was excellent. Thank you and looking forward to learning more through Dr. Macdonald's course.

Great work. Thanks

Excellent,excellent presentation!! It brings a lot a understanding. Thank you Dr. MacDonald and thank you Paul for bringing him to the channel!

JWW thinks it isn't a coincidence that Jesus parallels other figures from the OT? Well, yeah but not for the reason he thinks. Enjoyed this collab. 😊

Great episode! Very interesting information!

I am of the generation that studied English literature (in high school and in university) when Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye influenced the curriculum. Studying both mythologies and the Bible are important for a well-rounded education, even today. According to Frye, the Bible is a series of "mythical accretions" that builds the essential stories for a community, as part of establishing a social identity, as we would say today. In Frye's The Great Code, he shows how the Bible shaped and influenced writers and poets throughout the centuries. The main argument is that one cannot read later authors effectively without understanding the earlier works (mythology or the Bible). MacDonald's work is very useful because he is drawing attention to what the actual writing process was for the gospel writers. The recent scholarship of Robyn Faith Walsh is also helping in putting the spotlight on the writing process in the first and second centuries. The writers were Greek-educated and trained in the classics (Homer mostly), and they were well versed in the Septuagint. They used the cultural motifs of their era to illuminate a point they wanted to make -- that Jesus was better. The bigger picture view I think is that Christianity prevailed in the west, not because it was true in some historical sense, but because it was the best fit in an evolutionary sense. Christianity was best positioned to create enduring communities by the power of mythmaking in the writing process, which they exceled at in both form (beautiful writing, steeped in tradition), and in being psychologically rewarding as part of building a strong sense of community identity (that is, once Christianity got over its early failed prediction of an imminent end of the world). I think there is so much research potential that can finally be reached once we remove the shackles of rigid orthodoxy. We should look harder at the cultural milieu of the first and second centuries, and study how people wrote, and how they responded to writing. Richard C. Miller's Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity (2014) is another brilliant piece of scholarship that shows how readers in Roman times would have received stories of resurrection.

This was outstanding; the guest was brilliant. Quite a few wow moments. Thank you!

Wow.. this one is a heavy hitter. Great job here. I am now more intrigued than I’ve ever been in researching the parallels of Christian writers to Greek Mythology writers. Kind of mind blowing.

Thank you for this educational video, Paulogia! Dr. Macdonald is a great voice to add to your channel! I enjoyed this very much!

Saw you on "cuz I wanna" yesterday. While I don't spend a lot of time with Matt's content, the contrast between your style and his is always very entertaining and enlightening. This video was great, by the way.. I have very limited knowledge of ancient mythology, but I love to learn about it. I always thought that the comparative parallels between Jesus and old testament figures were a way that Christians looked down on Judaism.. which I guess was the point, huh?

This was an excellent deep dive into the mythos. Thanks!

I haven't had a chance to watch the video yet, but the "My God is Better Than Yours" in the thumbnail made an old Kennel Rations advertising song jingle in my ears . . . .

Finally someone who's willing to point out the effect he's trying to get with the visual display used. I have always been aware of it, I was wondering if someone would ever bring it up. 👍😉 I was hoping someone would draw some attention to it for those who don't realise. Thank you.

Brilliant, thoughtful, considerate guest

Wow! Good, good stuff here. Lotsa new info (to me at least) thanks!

That, again, was such a good lecture! Thank you very much!

I heard this a long time ago, It's not a new idea. "The previous, false religions foreshadowed the coming of the True God" stuff. Which made me wonder: why would millennia of prep work be necessary? What would it accomplish, other than muddying the waters by having generations of people believe in the (supposedly) wrong gods? Just be the Almighty and appear to everyone across the globe, simultaneously, and announce you are the one and only God. Then lay out what people need to do in no uncertain terms. No confusion. Problems solved.

Dr. Macdonald's work is fascinating. This is my first introduction and it was a great one. Thanks, man, for a great video.(yet another)

Loved that last line! I'm not anti religious, I'm anti stupidity!👍💖💙🥰✌

Great guest!

I enjoyed this so much.

Very insightful video!

it's amazing that you don't have to allow or be evil to your spouse to be loved, but the all powerful God has to. he fears no one would worship him if he was actually all good.

Great video

I’ve always thought biblical authors were just drawing from other stories to create their characters and stories, but the idea that they did it to show comparison and how their characters were better puts everything in a new light!

The origin story of Superman draws on the stories of Moses and Samson. Therefore, Superman is the True Messiah.

Half way through this I suddenly became terrified this material was going to be on the final exam.

Awesome episode.

This was really interesting, thank you

Nice! Loved the perspective that Dr. MacDonald shows here, makes a tonne of sense. Also Jesus is the vehicle at 44:19, gave me a laugh, so thanks for that editing!

This topic was very informative and interesting. I very much enjoyed listening to Dr. MacDonald. thank you very much to both of your.

Wallace's argument is like saying that if I make a movie that reuses themes from The Terminator, then it's more likely that the director of The Terminator predicted the future and matched his movie to mine than it is that I watched Terminator and incorporated its themes.

This is a really good video, Paulogia

Nice to see this subject talked about here. Until now I have only seen it at Myth Vision Podcast.

My favorite example is "Romeo and Juliet" and "West Side Story". It is undeniable that the literary "imitation"/borrowings between those to stories are NOT coincidental but deliberate

This was really interesting. A very different take on the mythic development of Biblical texts.

I always felt that Dionysus AKA Bacchus did it better🚰🚰🍷🍷

Paul. Your killin' it. You are doing a great job. The challenges you put out there are fair and ...um...provocative. So much better than a bunch of my apologist Friends sittin' around a late night table at Denny's affirming each other's prejudices. My seminary friends probably would not like me saying that. But, it is what it is.

there once was a meme with the text: "My barber can beat up your hairstyler" that was a joke but this isn't but with the same lack of depth.