*above art by Dr. Kevorkian
"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!" Pope Leo X
"When we say also that the Word, which is the first birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified, died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter." [ First Apology, Chapter xxi (Anti-Niacin Library.]-Justin Martyr
"The biblical flood story, the 'deluge,' was a late offshoot of a cycle of flood myths known everywhere in the ancient world. Thousands of years before the Bible was written, an ark was built by the Sumerian Ziusudra. In Akkad, the flood hero's name was Atrakhasis. In Babylon, he was Uta-Napishtim, the only mortal to become immortal. In Greece he was Deucalion, who repopulated the earth after the waters subsided [and after the ark landed on Mt. Parnassos] . . . In Armenia, the hero was Xisuthros - a corruption of Sumerian Ziusudra - whose ark landed on Mount Ararat. . . . According to the original Chaldean account, the flood hero was told by his god, 'Build a vessel and finish it. By a deluge I will destroy substance and life. Cause thou to go up into the vessel the substance of all that has life."-Barbara Walker
"A recurring myth though out the whole of the Middle East is that is that of a great flood or deluge. Indeed the theme is discovered as far as Western Europe and India.
According to the Babylonian version the flood is caused by the great storm god Enlil to punish mankind. In a city called Shuruppak on the river Euphrates there lived a man called Uta-Napishtim. He was the favourite of Ea, the god of wisdom and was warned by the god. Uta-Napishtim built himself a great boat 120 cubits high and the same wide. He took inside it his family, many craftsmen and a great stock of food. The pilot was called Puzur-Bel.
For six days and six nights it rained. The sun was blocked out. Even the gods were frightened and all men except Uta-Napishtim were destroyed. The gods were distraught at man’s destruction. The boat of Uta-Napishtim came to rest on Mount Nisir. On the seventh day of their resting on Mount Nisir he sent out a dove, which finding no place to land, returned and then he sent out a raven which did not return so he knew it was safe.
When he went out of his boat he made a sacrifice to the gods. The goddess Ishtar came and created a rainbow: her necklace. When Enlil discovered that Uta-Napishtim had escaped him he was furious and would have killed him. Ea persuaded Enlil that complete destruction of mankind was wrong. He said that only the men who had done wrong should be killed and not all mankind. Enlil was persuaded but still turned Uta-Napishtim into a god so that no man had escaped him.
There are in this myth some very obvious similarities to the biblical story of the flood. One of the differences is the hero. Uta-Napishtim, unlike Noah, is a good person but not perfect and is saved only because he is a favourite of Ea. Probably the largest difference between the two stories are the gods. That Israel was monotheistic and Babylon was polytheistic made little difference. The difference is that in Babylon’s myth the man is saved by another god whereas the biblical myth states that the instigator of the flood: God caused the man to be saved. Also Enlil was persuaded not to cause another flood by his fellow gods rather than by the man as God was." -Taken from The Babylonians by Francis C.S. Butterley.
Information on flood-myths and Noah's Ark:
Noah's Ark:A lost legend about Ziusudra, king of Sumer
Berosus-wrote the stolen story of Xisuthros
All of the Holidays that Christians celebrate are derived from pre-existent pagan cultures and beliefs. Which isn't surprising being that virtually everything in the Christian religion is a plagarisation of older pagan beliefs, not excluding its central figure of worship. Many different pagan salvation deities had been worshipped up to thousands of years before the story of Jesus Christ. Horus, Dionysus, and Mithra being only three examples, all actually even at one time or another portrayed as being crucified on a cross and resurrected. The reason why there were so many salvation deities that had the same underlining story is because these deities were not originally believed to be anthropomorphic beings but were meant to be allegorical; personifications of the sun and the description of its movements through the heavens. Here are some examples taken from Truthbeknown(just because Acharya S explains it better than I could):"...many of the world's crucified godmen have their traditional birthday on December 25th ("Christmas"). This is because the ancients recognized that (from an earthcentric perspective) the sun makes an annual descent southward until December 21st or 22nd, the winter solstice, when it stops moving southerly for three days and then starts to move northward again. During this time, the ancients declared that "God's sun" had "died" for three days and was "born again" on December 25th. The ancients realized quite abundantly that they needed the sun to return every day and that they would be in big trouble if the sun continued to move southward and did not stop and reverse its direction. Thus, these many different cultures celebrated the "sun of God's" birthday on December 25th. The following are the characteristics of the "sun of God": The sun "dies" for three days on December 22nd, the winter solstice, when it stops in its movement south, to be born again or resurrected on December 25th, when it resumes its movement north. In some areas, the calendar originally began in the constellation of Virgo, and the sun would therefore be "born of a Virgin." The sun is the "Light of the World." The sun "cometh on clouds, and every eye shall see him." The sun rising in the morning is the "Savior of mankind." The sun wears a corona, "crown of thorns" or halo. The sun "walks on water." The sun's "followers," "helpers" or "disciples" are the 12 months and the 12 signs of the zodiac or constellations, through which the sun must pass. The sun at 12 noon is in the house or temple of the "Most High"; thus, "he" begins "his Father's work" at "age" 12. The sun enters into each sign of the zodiac at 30°; hence, the "Sun of God" begins his ministry at "age" 30. The sun is hung on a cross or "crucified," which represents its passing through the equinoxes, the vernal equinox being Easter, at which time it is then resurrected. Contrary to popular belief, the ancients were not an ignorant and superstitious lot who actually believed their deities to be literal characters. Indeed, this slanderous propaganda has been part of the conspiracy to make the ancients appear as if they were truly the dark and dumb rabble that was in need of the "light of Jesus." The reality is that the ancients were no less advanced in their morals and spiritual practices, and in many cases were far more advanced, than the Christians in their own supposed morality and ideology, which, in its very attempt at historicity, is in actuality a degradation of the ancient Mythos. Indeed, unlike the "superior" Christians, the true intelligentsia amongst the ancients were well aware that their gods were astronomical and atmospheric in nature. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle surely knew that Zeus, the sky god father figure who migrated to Greece from India and/or Egypt, was never a real person, despite the fact that the Greeks have designated on Crete both a birth cave and a death cave of Zeus. In addition, all over the world are to be found sites where this god or that allegedly was born, walked, suffered, died, etc., a common and unremarkable occurrence that is not monopolized by, and did not originate with, Christianity."
"The god is born about December 25th, without sexual intercourse, for the sun, entering the winter solstice, emerges in the sign of Virgo, the heavenly Virgin. His mother remains ever-virgin, since the rays of the sun, passing through the zodiacal sign, leave it intact. His infancy is begirt with dangers, because the new-born Sun is feeble in the midst of the winter's fogs and mists, which threaten to devour him; his life is one of toil and peril, culminating at the spring equinox in a final struggle with the powers of darkness. At that period the day and night are equal, and both fight for the mastery. Though the night veil the urn and he seems dead; though he has descended out of sight, below the earth, yet he rises again triumphant, and he rises in the sign of the Lamb, and is thus the Lamb of God, carrying away the darkness and death of the winter months. Henceforth he triumphs, growing ever stronger and more brilliant. He ascends into the zenith, and there he glows, on the right hand of God, himself God, the very substance of the Father, the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, upholding all things by his lifegiving power."-Charles Francois Dupuis
"The selection of the twenty-fifth of December as his birthday is not only an arbitrary one, but that date, having been from time immemorial dedicated to the Sun, the inference is that the Son of God and the Sun of heaven enjoying the same birthday, were at one time identical beings. The fact that Jesus' death was accompanied with the darkening of the Sun, and that the date of his resurrection is also associated with the position of the Sun at the time of the vernal equinox, is a further intimation that we have in the story of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, an ancient and nearly universal Sun-myth, instead of verifiable historical events. The story of Jesus for three days in the heart of the earth; of Jonah, three days in the belly of a fish; of Hercules, three days in the belly of a whale, and of Little Red Riding Hood, sleeping in the belly of a great black wolf, represent the attempt of primitive man to explain the phenomenon of Day and Night. The Sun is swallowed by a dragon, a wolf, or a whale, which plunges the world into darkness; but the dragon is killed, and the Sun rises triumphant to make another Day. This ancient Sun myth is the starting point of nearly an miraculous religions, from the days of Egypt to the twentieth century."-Mangasarian
Its ironic that these self righteous arrogant Christians who are so against pagan beliefs and who believe that everything that pagans worship or celebrate is "from the devil" are no more pagan than the pagans they have persecuted and made war against.
As early Church Father Tertullian once said in defense to his critics "You say we worship the sun; so do you."
Also, the use of holly, mistletoe, yule logs, wassail bowls, and decorating a tree derived from early pagan customs.The tree is particulary taken from the Germanic myths representing the Tree of the World in which Odin hung head first on for 9 days and 9 nights.Many European countries still call Christmas Yule-tide, meaning "wheel-tide".
Christians did not celebrate the birth of Jesus until the 4th century and the aim of this was to subvert the pagan practices of Mithra and Saturnalia. Pope Liberus introduced the Nativity on December 25th 354 C.E.
Here is a number of deities who predate the Christian myth and contributed to the story of Christ:
"[Regarding the] Christian Myth, they know it is myth. In private discussions with theologians, they shocked me by admitting they know it is all a myth. One Jesuit told me, "Those stories are for the unthinking lay public." This changes the problem from one of ignorance to one of lies and deceit".-Don Richards
"Jesus is a mythical figure in the tradition of pagan mythology and almost nothing in all of ancient literature would lead one to believe otherwise. Anyone wanting to believe Jesus lived and walked as a real live human being must do so despite the evidence, not because of it.-C. Dennis McKinsey"
"The Christian religion and Masonry have one and the same common origin: Both are derived from the worship of the Sun. The difference between their origin is, that the Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun".-Thomas Paine
"From beginning to end the history is not human but divine, and the divine is the mythical. From the descent of the Holy Ghost to overshadow Mary, to the ascension of the risen Christ at the end of forty days, according to the drama of the pre-Christian Mysteries, the subject-matter, the characters, occurrences, events, acts, and sayings bear the impress of the mythical mould instead of the stamp of human history. Right through, the ideas which shape the history were pre-extant, and are identifiably pre-Christian; and so we see the strange sight to-day in Europe of 100,000,000 of Pagans masquerading as Christians.
Whether you believe it or not does not matter, the fatal fact remains that every trait and feature which go to make up the Christ as Divinity, and every event or circumstance taken to establish the human personality were pre-extant, and pre-applied to the Egyptian and Gnostic Christ, who never could become flesh. The Jesus Christ with female paps, who is the Alpha and Omega of Revelation, was the IU of Egypt, and the Iao of the Chaldeans. Jesus as the Lamb of God, and Ichthys the Fish, was Egyptian. Jesus as the Coming One; Jesus born of the Virgin Mother, who was overshadowed by the Holy Ghost; Jesus born of two mothers, both of whose names are Mary; Jesus born in the manger--at Christmas, and again at Easter; Jesus saluted by the three kings, or Magi; Jesus of the transfiguration on the Mount; Jesus whose symbol in the Catacombs is the eight-rayed Star--the Star of the East; Jesus as the eternal Child; Jesus as God the Father, re-born as his own Son; Jesus as the Child of twelve years; Jesus as the Anointed One of thirty years; Jesus in his Baptism; Jesus walking on the Waters, or working his Miracles; Jesus as the Caster-out of demons; Jesus as a Substitute, who suffered in a vicarious atonement for sinful men; Jesus whose followers are the two brethren, the four fishers, the seven fishers, the twelve apostles, the seventy (or seventy-two in some texts) whose names were written in Heaven; Jesus who was administered to by seven women; Jesus in his bloody sweat; Jesus betrayed by Judas; Jesus as conqueror of the grave; Jesus the Resurrection and the Life; Jesus before Herod; in the Hades, and in his re-appearance to the women, and to the seven fishers; Jesus who was crucified both on the 14th and 15th of the month Nisan; Jesus who was also crucified in Egypt (as it is written in Revelation); Jesus as judge of the dead, with the sheep on the right hand, and the goats on the left, is Egyptian from first to last, in every phase, from the beginning to the end--"Gerald Massey
"There is not a conception associated with Christ that is not common to some or all of the Savior cults of antiquity." J.M. Robertson
Christ A Fiction by Robert Price
Did Jesus Ever Exist or is Christianity Founded Upon A Myth?
The Jesus Puzzle: Was There No Historical Jesus? by Earl Doherty
The Truth About Jesus by Mangasarian
Forgery in Christianity by Joseph Wheless
Christianity:Quotes on the fictitious bible
The Great Myth of the Sun-Gods by Alvin Boyd Kuhn, PhD
The Myth of the Historical Jesus by Hayyim ben Yehoshua
The Jesus of History by Gordon Stein
Did Christ Really Live? by Marshall Gauvin
Who is this King of Glory? by Alvin Boyd Kuhn
Rationalists Manual:More on Christianity and its Pagan Origins
Did Jesus Exist? by Frank Zindler
Gnostic and Historic Christianity by Gerald Massey
The Twelve: Further Fictions From the New Testament
Was Jesus Man or Myth by Richard Layton
Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth
The Christ by John E. Remsburg
The Christian cross as we know it today only came to it's current form by century 5 A.D. Before that time it had gone through a series of transformations. Some early Christians used the swastika as the symbol representing the cross that their savior Jesus Christ allegedly died on for instance. They also used the Egyptian Ankh, a cross with a oval circle on the top, representing the phallus and vagina as one, the union of the sexes, only the Christians, in their hatred of femininity removed the oval at the top leaving only the phallic cross. Another example of the cross's representation of the genitals is the Celtic cross with the cross with the sun crucified on it, showing the phallic member sheathing itself within the vagina in sexual union.
"The symbol of Phallic worship, the cross, has become the emblem of Christianity. I quote again from our English authoress: "We find the cross in India, Egypt, Tibet, Japan, always as the sign of life-giving power, it was worn as an amulet by girls and women, and seems to have been specially worn by the women attached to the temples [sacred prostitutes], as a symbol of what was, to them, a religious calling. The cross is, in fact, nothing but the refined phallus, and in the Christian religion is a significant emblem of its pagan origin; it was adored, carved in temples, and worn as a sacred emblem by sun and nature worshipers, long before there were any Christians to adore, carve, and wear it. The crowd kneeling before the cross in Roman Catholic and in High Anglican churches is a simple reproduction of the crowd who knelt before it in the temples of ancient days, and the girls who wear it amongst ourselves are -- in the most innocent unconsciousness of its real significance -- exactly copying the Indian and Egyptian women of an elder time."-Taken from John E. Remsburg's The Christ.
It also represents the sun crossified on the zodiac between the equinoxes. The cross that is generally known today to represent the Christian Jesus is called the Latin Cross. The cross depicting Jesus crucified on it did not appear til the 8th century A.D. Before that it was shown as a sheep crucified on the cross. In any case, the cross was not originally found in the Christian mythology as the altar of the ultimate blood sacrifice of the salvation god Jesus for Horus, Mithra, Indras, Prometheus, Tammuz and Buddha and many other salvation godmen had all been crucified on a cross in stories prior to Christianity.
For more on the cross go here.
Above amulet reads in Greek:"Orpheus Bacchus" one of the pseudonyms of Osiris-Dionysus. It is dated to be from the 3rd century BCE.
Found throughout pre-Christian Pagan sects is the concept of the trinity. Mithra-Vohu Mana-Rashnu, Amen-Mut-Khonsu, and Osiris-Isis-Horus are only a few examples.
Virgin Birth
Romulus and Remus, Zoroaster, Buddha, Mithras, Chrishna, Osiris-Aion, Agdistis, Attis, Tammuz, Adonis, Korybas, Perseus, Horus and Dionysus are just a few examples of all the pagan gods born of virgins, and all of them before the advent of Christianity.
Royal Decree
Many pre-Christian Pagan sects relate a story of some royal king who ordered that all male children should be killed to prevent the coming god/messiah. A few of the gods this story was told about includes:Romulus and Remus, Perseus, Chrishna, Zeus, Hercules and Oedipus.
Disciples
As for having disciples, normally depicted as 12, Horus, Buddha, Chrishna, Dionysus, and Mithra all had this attribute to their story.
Miracles
Horus, Chrishna, Buddha, Dionysus, Mithra, Osirus,Hercules and Adonis all performed miracles. Horus and Buddha both was said to have walked on water.As stated above, near the beginning of this page, Horus also raised a man named El-Lazarus from the dead in front of countless multitudes at least 1,000 years before Christ. The story of the feeding of five hundred men with one loaf of bread has been found in stories of Krishna and Buddha. Buddha also cured lepers and returned sight to the blind. Dionysus gave food and drink to starving people as well as turn water into wine.
Hercules
"...are our..[Pagan beliefs] to be accounted myths and theirs [the Christians'] believed? What reasons do the Christians give for the distinctiveness of their beliefs? In truth, there is nothing at all unusual about what the Christians believe..." Celsus, late 2nd century CE.
Hercules also has a very similar story to Jesus. Hercules was born from a god, Zeus, and a virgin mother Alceme. Similar to Herod in the Christ story, Hera wanted to kill him. Hercules traveled the world helping humankind and performing miracles. When he died he rose to Mt. Olympus and became a god. People believed he was a historical figure and dedicated temples to him, worshiped him and told stories about him. Actual historical people like Hesiod and Plato mention him. The epic stories of Homer dipict his life. Aesop tells stories of Hercules and quotes his words. And even more surprisingly, just as Josephus mentions Jesus in his Antiquities of the Jews, written in 93 C.E., although proved to be a later interpolation (probably by Eusebius since he was the first to ever notice it and even if it was truly Josephus who wrote it, it is not contemporary with Jesus' life and therefore only based on hearsay, not eyewitness proof, being that it was written decades after the alleged life of Jesus), Josephus also writes of Hercules in Antiquities. Tacitus also mentions Hercules in his Annals as well as a Christus. And being that there is no artifacts, contemporary writings, or eyewitnesses to Hercules, just as there is none of Jesus Christ, are we to believe that Hercules is also a historical figure? Just because a mere couple of historians far removed from the time of Jesus' alleged lifetime mention him based on hearsay?
"The Bible is not the "word of God," but stolen from pagan sources. Its Eden, Adam and Eve were taken from the Babylonian accounts; its Flood and Deluge is but an epitome of some four hundred flood accounts; its Ark and Ararat have their equivalents in a score of Deluge myths; even the names of Noah's sons are copies, so also Isaac's sacrifice, Solomon's judgment, and Samson's pillar acts; its Moses is fashioned after the Syrian Mises; its laws after Hammurabi's code. Its Messiah is derived from the Egyptian Mahdi, Savior, certain verses are verbatim copies of Egyptian scriptures. Between Jesus and the Egyptian Horus, Gerald Massy found 137 similarities, and those between Christ and Krishna run into the hundreds. How then can the Bible be a revelation to the Jews?"-Loyd Graham
Noah's Ark
Pagan Holidays
Pre-Christian Gods
Jesus is a Myth
The "Christian" Cross
The Trinity