The true meaning of Christmas
As can be seen from the Discovery clip here, the mainstream media and academia are finally catching up with what I’ve been saying for 15 years online and many others for decades and centuries before that. Too bad our educational system doesn’t teach important and interesting facts like these to children, so it didn’t take nearly 2,000 years to return to this vital knowledge, which was buried by Christian fanaticism.
In any event, Happy Solstice!
Further Reading
The Christmas Hoax: Jesus is NOT the Reason for the Season
When Was the First Christmas?
The Star in the East and the Three Wise Men
Mithra the Pagan Christ
3 Kings/Orion’s Belt & Solstice/Christmas
Was Krishna Born on December 25th?
5 thoughts on “The true meaning of Christmas”
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Dear Acharya,
Your post made me pick up your excellent book Suns of God, as always a fair and thorough review of the materials. I think that last Christmyths I was also encouraged by your work on Jesus’ b-day.
Also wanted to add that according to Clement there were at least three birthdays of Jesus considered in Egypt and the dates given in April and May fall close to the alleged b-day’s of the Buddha. The gospels offer little to help with a birth date, but there are Indian allusions such as the baby Jesus being restrained in (sparganoo) which early commentators recognized, like the tradition of leveling roads for a king or sage, as an oriental custom. Of course with the baby Buddha legend he is not swaddled but possessed of his faculties and walks seven steps in each direction (part of this is found in the Infancy Gospel of Mary). Also noted is the account in Pseudo Matthew of the palm tree bending down at Jesus’ birth to give her fruit, here Jesus, like in the gospels, commands the palm tree (fruit is magically produced also in Buddhist legend). The Qur’nic account of this hints to Maya’s death seven days after which is probably related to the sun-myth and the poles of the Vesakha is quite similar to the Maypole festivals. Further Buddhist parallels in Germanic traditions must be considered such as the tree worship of Odin, the Uppsala tree/Bodhi tree (both said to have never been cut & similar heart shaped leaves), the Fir tree worship/Asoka tree. Before the dates for Jesus’ b=day were argued, the northern Scythian Buddhists had already turned Buddha into the sun-myth and he is also constantly called the son of the sun; the pun being understandable in Scythian, Gothic and the Sanskrit languages known to Kanishka and Asvaghosa.
The Buddha/Jesus infancy parallels have been pointed out, most recently in Professor Thundy’s book Buddha and Christ, Nativity stories from Indian traditions. One parallel explored is the birth announcement from the angel in which Matthew quotes from the Septuagint and calls Mary a virgin. So we have the gospels quoting, several times, from the book published by the Ptolemic king whose name is found on Asoka’s edicts (Philadelphus) and whose Serapis figure became a center of learning for the Therapeautae and early Christians. The head librarian under this ruler was first to publish fables under the name of “Aesop”
. The Buddhist texts speak of kings giving gifts to the Buddha child (strings of gems exactly like wreaths of plants, and little golden carriages yoked with deer)
The magi that came to visit Jesus are usually depicted with the Scythian caps and were said to have traveled with staffs that had a metal ring on the end, same allowed of Buddhist monks who traveled.
my sympathies to you
I am so sorry that you have made up your mind to reject the evidence of Jesus being the Christ as he claimed. I, too, was once of the same mind-set as you.
I certainly won’t try to change your mind, but I will say that because of things that have happened in my own experience, I am now a staunch Believer and happier than I could ever have imagined.
I used to be where you are now, believing in Jesus with only personal evidence to back up my beliefs. Once you do the research and realize that it is myth, and that humans are capable of having spiritual experiences about ANYTHING whilst convincing themselves of what they WANT to believe in, you see that we’ve been duped.
I find it interesting that you are on Acharya’s site at all. Have you read her books, have you studied the evidence and lack thereof that she presents? Have you read and studied the countless other texts that are out there on the subject? Or are you basing your beliefs only on personal experience, both yours and others?
Christians and Muslims, especially, and Jews to an extent, very rarely read anything other than their respective “Holy Books,” and therefore their religious beliefs are based on emotions, rather than historical fact. I believe this is not by coincidence but rather by design, as anyone who reads these texts with any kind of unbiased attention will see that they are historically inaccurate, so it can only be that the writers and compilers of these texts had ulterior motives (i.e. control of the masses.) This is also why there is such strong emotion and a history of violence associated with Christianity and Islam, if beliefs were based on fact, the strong emotions towards any non-believers would not be necessary.
There’s nothing wrong with adhering to a set of beliefs, just don’t claim, without evidence, that these beliefs are based on fact.
And btw, you expressing your sympathies towards the writer only proves your arrogance and close-mindedness.
Even honest professed Christian New Testament scholars concede that the evidence for Jesus is “scanty and problematic.”
Here are a few quotes from the book [i]Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ[/i]:
[quote]”Apart from the New Testament writings and later writings dependent upon these, our sources of information about the life and teaching of Jesus are scanty and problematic”
F.F. Bruce, a founder of the modern evangelical movement
– [i]Who Was Jesus?[/i] 84[/quote]
[quote]”…there are very few sources for knowledge of the historical Jesus beyond the four canonical Gospels. Paul and Josephus offer little more than tidbits. Claims that later apocryphal Gospels and the Nag Hammadi material supply independent and reliable historical information about Jesus are largely fantasy. In the end, the historian is left with the difficult task of sifting through the Four Gospels for historical tradition.”
John P. Meier
– [i]Who Was Jesus?[/i] 86
* Dr. Meier is a Catholic University New Testament professor, ex-Catholic priest and monsignor[/quote]
[quote]”One would naturally expect that the Lord Jesus Christ would be sufficiently important to receive ample notice in the literature of his time, and that extensive biographical material would be available. He was observed by multitudes of people, and his own followers numbered into the hundreds (1 Cor. 15:6), whose witness was still living in the middle of the first century. As a matter of fact, the amount of information concerning him is comparatively meager. Aside from the four Gospels, and a few scattered allusions in the epistles, contemporary history is almost silent concerning him.”
Merrill C. Tenney
– [i]Who Was Jesus?[/i] 85-86
* Dr. Tenney is a conservative evangelical Christian who was a professor of Theological Studies and the dean of the school of Theology at Wheaton College. Tenney was also one of the original translators of the NASB and NIV editions of the Bible.[/quote]
[quote]”…Christian scholars over the centuries have admitted that … “there are parallels between the Mysteries and Christianity”1 and that “the miracle stories of the Gospels do in fact parallel literary forms found in pagan and Jewish miracle stories,”2 “…According to Form Criticism the Gospels are more like folklore and myth than historical fact.”3
1. Metzger, HLS, 8.
2. Meier, II, 536.
3. Geisler, CA, 320.
– [i]Who Was Jesus?[/i] 259[/quote]
[quote]”The only definite account of his life and teachings is contained in the four Gospels of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All other historical records of the time are silent about him. The brief mentions of Jesus in the writings of Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius have been generally regarded as not genuine and as Christian interpolations; in Jewish writings there is no report about Jesus that has historical value. Some scholars have even gone so far as to hold that the entire Jesus story is a myth…”
The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (v. 6, 83)
– [i]Who Was Jesus?[/i] 84[/quote]
[quote]”The gospels are in fact anonymous”
– Dr. Craig L. Blomberg
– [i]Who Was Jesus?[/i] 60[/quote]
[quote]”The Gospels are neither histories nor biographies, even within the ancient tolerances for those genres.”
Dr. John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus
– [i]Who Was Jesus?[/i] 24
* Dr. Crossan is a major figure in the fields of biblical archaeology, anthropology and New Testament textual and higher criticism. He is especially vocal in the field of Historical Jesus studies[/quote]
[quote]”The works of Greek, Roman and Jewish historians all probably influenced the New Testament writers.”
Dr. J.P. Moreland
– [i]Who Was Jesus?[/i] 261[/quote]
donating souls to sun
countries like donating souls to the sun god,nearli everi religion is of this cocept,of souls’return to a sole of souls…like us’president obama,speaking of walking in eternal sunshine,at at chariti dinner,during final days of campaign…have ye heard the lyrics to the song”’i wont worry my life away….it says,”shine the lite on all of yore friends when it all amounts to nothin in the end”….now comare notes,with…verse to let yore lite so shine among men. so they mite see yore good works and glorifi yore’god[[father,source]]],which is in heaven…interesting enough,i see peoples whom let their lite so shine and do the most good,treated with the most evil,and their god gets called the devil,while the fake,the pretenders of churches get treated best…hmmm…..and to this little lite of mine’i going to let it shine…wel psychic vampires love you to do this so they mite feed on yore lite to make their lite briter,so then in the end they wil smile,and wish you’hel,while they walk away with yores,even other famili,and friends’soul’lite’energis…never touch,nor shake hand of sumone praising you,nor cursing you,best never to touch anione…