{"collection":"Bible & Christianity","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/bib/cv/pch/index.htm","path":"bib/cv/pch/index.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/bib/cv/pch/index.htm","text":"Sacred Texts\u00a0\n Bible\u00a0\n Bible Critical Views\u00a0\n \nBuy this Book at Amazon.com\n \n \n \n \n | Prometheus, (Detail) by Gustave Moreau [19th cent.] (Public Domain Image) | Pagan Christs by John M. Robertson [1911] | \n \n \n \n \n Contents\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n Start Reading\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n Page Index\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n Text [Zipped]\n \n \n \n ...you take the blue pill--the story ends...you take the red pill...and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.--Morpheus in The Matrix\n \n Talk about your red pills.\n J.M. Robertson herein challenges not only the historical authenticity\n of the canonical accounts of the founding of Christianity,\n but also Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism.\n He answers the question implicit in Kersey Graves' 1875 screed,\n The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors.\n Why so many similar stories of savior figures in world religion?\n \n \n At the dark heart of this mystery, according to Robinson,\n is a prehistoric drama involving human sacrifice (particularly, of children),\n cannibalism, and regicide.\n The purpose: to implore the gods, or to expiate collective sin.\n As time passed, the rituals were softened, and turned into\n symbolic equivalents (such as the scapegoat and the eucharist),\n while retaining the tragic end of the narrative.\n A culture hero, born under portents,\n dies, often under torture, in order to save all humanity.\n These and other tropes ended up embedded in our tales of the founders\n of major religions, from Buddha to Jesus.\n \n \n Robertson pulls in historic, ethnographic and folklore data\n from hundreds of carefully cited sources.\n He covers examples from antiquity such as Mithraism, Manichaeism,\n and Apollonius of Tyana.\n In the final section he universalizes his study and\n focuses on Native America, particularly the Aztec.\n The conclusions of this book remain highly controversial, but\n the sheer mass of evidence accumulated demands consideration.\n This will be a thorny book for believers, but a revelation for\n free-thinkers.\n \n --J.B. Hare, Feb. 10, 2008.\n \n \n Title Page\n By the Same Author\n Contents\n Preface to the Second Edition\n Introduction\n \n \n Part I. The Rationale of Religion\n \n \n Chapter I. The Naturalness of all Belief\n \u00a7 1. Origin of the Gods from Fear\n \u00a7 2. All Belief Results of Reasoning\n \u00a7 3. Dr. Jevons\u2019 Theories of Religious Evolution\n \u00a7 4. Scientific View of the Religious Evolution\n \u00a7 5. Dr. Frazer's Definition\n \u00a7 6. The Scientific Induction\n \u00a7 7. Dr. Jevons\u2019 Series of Self-Contradictions\n \u00a7 8. His Contradictory Doctrine of the Conditions of the Survival of Religion\n \u00a7 9. The Continuity of Religious Phenomena\n \u00a7 10. Dr. Frazer's Sociological Vindication of the Sorcerer\n \u00a7 11. The Beginning of the End of Religion\n \u00a7 12. Historic View of Ancestor Worship\n \u00a7 13. The Authoritarian Element a Mark of Religion\n \u00a7 14. Definition of Religion\n \n \n Chapter II. Comparison and Appraisement of Religions\n \u00a7 1. Early Forces of Reform\n \u00a7 2. Reform as a Religious Process\n \u00a7 3. Polytheism and Monotheism\n \u00a7 4. Hebrews and Babylonians\n \u00a7 5. Forces of Religious Evolution\n \u00a7 6. The Hebrew Evolution\n \u00a7 7. Post-Exilic Phases\n \u00a7 8. Revival and Disintegration\n \u00a7 9. Conclusion\n \n \n Part II. Secondary God-Making\n \n \n Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour-God\n \u00a7 1. Totemism and Sacraments\n \u00a7 2. Theory and Ritual of Human Sacrifice\n \u00a7 3. The Christian Crucifixion\n \u00a7 4. Vogue of Human Sacrifice\n \u00a7 5. The Divinity of the Victim\n \u00a7 6. The Cannibal Sacrament\n \u00a7 7. The Semitic Antecedents\n \u00a7 8. The Judaic Evolution\n \u00a7 9. Specific Survivals in Judaism\n \u00a7 10. The Pre-Christian Jesus-God\n \u00a7 11. Private Jewish Eucharists\n \u00a7 12. The Eucharist in Orthodox Judaism\n \u00a7 13. Special Features of the Crucifixion Myth\n \u00a7 14. Possible Historical Elements\n \u00a7 15. The Gospel Mystery-Play\n \u00a7 16. The Mystery-Play and the Cultus\n \u00a7 17. Further Pagan Adaptations\n \u00a7 18. Synopsis and Conclusion: Genealogy of Human Sacrifice and Sacrament\n \n \n Chapter II. The Teaching God\n \u00a7 1. Primary and Secondary Ideas\n \u00a7 2. The Logos\n \u00a7 3. Derivations of the Christian Logos\n \u00a7 4. The Search for a Historical Jesus\n \u00a7 5. The Critical Problem\n \u00a7 6. Collapse of the Constructive Case\n \u00a7 7. Parallel Problems\n \u00a7 8. The Problem of Buddhist Origins\n \u00a7 9. Buddhism and Buddhas\n \u00a7 10. The Buddhist Cruces\n \u00a7 11. Sociological Clues\n \u00a7 12. Buddhism and Asoka\n \u00a7 13. The Buddha Myth\n \u00a7 14. The Problem of Manich\u00e6us\n \u00a7 15. The Manichean Solution\n \u00a7 16. The Case of Apollonius of Tyana\n \n \n Part III. Mithraism\n \u00a7 1. Introductory\n \u00a7 2. Beginnings of Cult\n \u00a7 3. Zoroastrianism\n \u00a7 4. Evolution of Mithra\n \u00a7 5. The Process of Syncretism\n \u00a7 6. Symbols of Mithra\n \u00a7 7. The Cultus\n \u00a7 8. The Creed\n \u00a7 9. Mithraism and Christianity\n \u00a7 10. Further Christian Parallels\n \u00a7 11. The Vogue of Mithraism\n \u00a7 12. Absorption in Christianity\n \u00a7 13. The Point of Junction\n \n \n Part IV. The Religions of Ancient America\n \u00a7 1. American Racial Origins\n \u00a7 2. Aztecs and Peruvians\n \u00a7 3. Primitive Religion and Human Sacrifice\n \u00a7 4. The Mexican Cultus\n \u00a7 5. Mexican Sacrifices and Cannibal Sacraments\n \u00a7 6. Mexican Ethics\n \u00a7 7. The Mexican White Christ\n \u00a7 8. The Fatality of the Priesthood\n \u00a7 9. The Religion of Peru\n \u00a7 10. Conclusion\n \n \n Appendices\n Appendix A. The Eating of the Crucified Human Sacrifice\n Appendix B. Dramatic and Ritual Survivals\n Appendix C. Replies to Criticisms\n Index","title":"Pagan Christs Index","type":"page"}