Are the Jesus healing miracles just copies of earlier pagan legends common in antiquity?
What are the earlier pagan legends of someone resurrecting or doing miracles?
No, there are no other dying and resurrecting stories from the Middle East. You can't name one and cite a source for it. I know you can rattle off a list of names of supposed resurrected gods/heroes, but you can't quote any source for those, giving the account of it and reporting the alleged event.
Yes, I can. Osiris. Well documented Greek myth.
Yes, the Egyptian who was killed and did NOT come back to life but was succeeded by his son. There are two problems you must address in claiming this is a "documented" story of someone who resurrected: 1) Where exactly is the "resurrection" in the story? and 2) for documenting it as an alleged fact of history (as the Jesus resurrection as an event is documented by written accounts near to the time it allegedly happened), when did the Osiris event reportedly happen in history and when is it reported in the source which documents it? i.e., when is the source dated?
You have to show in the source a claim that this person died and then came back to life to live on as before, seen by witnesses or in some way confirmed. And the source saying this has to be dated reasonably close to when the alleged resurrection event took place. Neither of these is the case for Osiris, who might have been a real person, but for whom we have no sources anywhere near the time that he lived, if he lived.
And the sources we do have about this do not say that Osiris resurrected -- i.e., there is no actual "resurrection" event in the legend. The word "resurrection" is used only by later Christianized scholars giving their interpretation of the Osiris story, not by the original source telling us the event. These modern scholars use the NT word "resurrection" and apply it to Osiris, as having some similarity to the Christ resurrection, in their mind. But the story they take from the source does not say Osiris came back to life, but only that he spawned a son who lived on, just as any offspring lives on, which is not what "resurrection" means. If "resurrection" did mean that, then all humans have resurrected who left behind any offspring, which is obviously not what "resurrection" means.
Orpheus, the son of a God, comes out of the underworld.
Yes, but the story does not say that he died. Resurrection means the person first dies, or is killed, and then is brought back to life. Just visiting another realm or dimension or alternate universe of some kind does not mean the visitor first died. The Orpheus story does not say he first died before visiting the underworld.
No, "well documented" has to mean more than just hundreds of poets 1000 years later retelling the tale, even assuming sufficient agreement among them. To be "documented" means there are written accounts of it near the time of the reported event. We need something less than 100 or 200 years later which reports it. Preferably only 50 years, but maybe 100 or 200 -- no one has established the rule for exactly how long this time-span should be between the actual event (when it allegedly happened) and the date when it's reported to us in the source. But shorter is better, and many centuries gets to be too long.
For normal events we can trust an author 100 or 200 or even 300 years later, as long as it's not contradicted by other sources. However, for miracle claims, or anything "supernatural" etc., we need extra evidence, such as extra sources, more than one, plus also a reasonable proximity of the report, chronologically, to the event being reported.
We have no such source for Orpheus. The written record for the Christ event of 30 AD, to "document" it, dates from about 50-100 AD -- 5 sources reporting the Resurrection, and 4 of them reporting the healing miracles. That is "well documented" -- but poets 1000 years later retelling a popular legend with no source within 500 or 1000 years of the event is not "well documented."
There's so many sources I wonder how lazy you are?
Lazy enough to want those sources to be reasonably close to the actual event, like maybe within 100 or 200 years. What good are the "so many sources" if they're no closer than 500 or 1000 years later? Hundreds of sources 1000+ years later is not "well documented" -- we have millions of legends repeated over and over in multiple sources centuries later. The later storytellers are not "sources" for the actual event, as evidence for it, near the time when it happened, if it happened. We're entitled to be "lazy" and demand something closer to the actual event.
The Orpheus story can be found in Ovid's Metamorphosis, one of the most famous books in world history.
But Ovid relied only on an ancient legend, not on any reports near to his time from someone close to the event, if it happened.
The Osiris myth is literally carved in stone in many ancient Egyptian tombs.
Not tombs from 3100 BC near to the time of Osiris, if he was a real person, which is possible. The sources we have are sufficient to establish maybe that he lived, and maybe he spawned a son Horus. There's nothing to establish how he died or if anything unusual happened, such as his being raised back to life after being killed. It's reasonable to believe he might have been killed, in a power struggle.
But for miracle claims, such as him having sex after his body had been sliced and diced into a hundred pieces and then put back together -- we don't have any serious sources for an event like that. For bizarre miracle claims we need more than one source, and these must come from a time point near to when the alleged event happened, like less than 50 or 100 or 200 years. The earliest Osiris sources are 500-600 years later than the alleged event.
It's reasonable to assume from them that there was a power struggle in which Osiris was killed, but also that he had an heir Horus who continued his dynasty forward -- and that's your only "resurrection" of Osiris. We're entitled to put together a normal story from the details of the tale, but without the bizarre or miraculous elements, when there is no proper source for these near to the time it happened. It's also a reasonable speculation that his wife Isis made up a story of having sex with him even though he had been killed, so that then her son would inherit the reign. More likely is that she got impregnated by someone else later and then claimed the offspring was really from Osiris, and perhaps a miracle claim got into the story, and people believed her.
Or, if we must totally discount the possibility that any Osiris or Isis even existed and insist instead that the accounts of them are completely fiction stories made up by storytellers, without any connection to history at all, then it's improper to offer this as comparison to the historical Jesus, who probably did exist in history as most historians believe, and who thus cannot be compared to someone whose historical existence is totally discounted as a possibility.
The list of these stories is long.
Of course the list gets long after many centuries of legend-building. These are not strictly "sources" to document what actually happened in history, or at least not for anything dubious or a matter of dispute. But there were the real events historically, which we should search for and for which we can use all the sources to speculate what really happened, including anything unusual, even "supernatural" or dubious claims, but not based on a "long list" of stories added 1000 years later.
The Jesus myth in the Bible was never intended by its authors to be an accurate account.
It was at least partly, if not 100% intended as accurate.
There are inaccuracies, probably, as in any ancient written accounts (and even most modern accounts). In some cases maybe an author included something inaccurate and even knew it was inaccurate. Also there could be something subconscious going on, where the author only half believed it, realizing there was also a fiction element.
But it's wrong to say that ALL the "miraculous" elements were known by the author to be inaccurate or fiction. Rather, there may be some of that mixed in, but still the accounts are intended mostly to be taken as accurate, and mostly believed by the authors, just as Josephus and Herodotus and Cicero believed what they were saying and yet still mixed propaganda into their writings or speeches, including exaggerations or distortions in order to strengthen the case they were making. There could be some conscious and some subconscious elements they included which were inaccurate and not totally honest.
That does not disqualify the accounts as reliable sources for the reported events, and for all the sources we must apply the rule that for "miracle" claims or anything very unusual we must have stronger evidence, such as extra sources, and these reasonably close in time to the actual reported events.
The Jesus miracle acts, including the Resurrection, are a case of "miracle" claims where we do have the necessary extra sources close in time to when the events happened, unlike 99% of miracle claims in all the various legends and sources. And especially for the ancient history events we usually are lacking sufficient sources near to when the event happened to be able to make the "miracle" claims credible.
That's not the kind of book it is. It's not a "report".
But it contains "reports" along with other elements to tell us what happened while also promoting the authors' beliefs or worldview. A written account does not have to be neatly classified as something excluding the "report" element. There probably is no such thing as "the kind of book" that is "report" only. The most respected ancient historian, Thucydides, did more than just give a "report" of the facts, but also included propaganda and psychology and historical philosophy/theory. Likewise the Bible writings also included "reports" along with the teaching matter and are reliable sources for the "report" or factual part, despite also containing inaccuracies, as virtually all the ancient writings did. ALL the ancient writings have to be read skeptically, even Thucydides, and not taken automatically as accurate in all the "reporting" they do.
The Gospels include some NEGATIVE "reports" about Jesus.
And the Gospel accounts do contain some "report" element which has nothing to do with teaching religion and even gives a negative side which is unfavorable to the image of Jesus as divine and perfect.
One example of this is the story of the rejection at Nazareth (Mark 6:1-6) where we're told that Jesus was "not able to perform any mighty deed there," which would not be included in the Gospel accounts if their sole purpose was to promote Jesus as a divine miracle-worker and omit any inconvenient facts. Whatever this rejection at Nazareth event was, it shows that these writers were willing to include reports reflecting something negative about Jesus.
Another negative element is related in Mark 3:21
When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, "He has gone out of his mind."
This is negative enough to not be something the Gospel writer would provide if it is inspirational only, and limited to positive "myth" telling. Rather, it is something in Mark's source, which has more of a negative tone than positive, toward Jesus, and Mark provides it not in order to promote his portrayal of Jesus, but simply as a "report" from his source which he feels obligated to include.
Another negative element is the story of the demoniac being cured and the demons being sent into a herd of swine (Mark 5:1-20). This story cannot be easily understood as "inspirational" with all the negative imagery in it, of the local ranchers losing their herd and requesting that Jesus get the hell out of their district. If the author is creating only positive "myths" about Jesus, why doesn't he add something for Jesus to do to compensate those ranchers, like maybe performing some miracle for them? The demoniac he healed was not Jewish or somehow special that he alone was worthy to be helped. Mark could easily have added a miracle to benefit the local population and dazzle them with the power of Jesus, as happens in many of the reported miracle episodes. But instead this story leaves us with a bitter outcome where a very large group of locals, who did nothing wrong, end up hating Jesus, for good reason, because he caused much costly damage to their interests.
Plus also the demoniac stories generally have a bizarre unpleasantness about them which would not be included in stories created only to inspire the readers and strengthen their faith with heartwarming myths. The Gospel of John excludes the exorcism stories entirely as something distasteful and of little use in promoting the author's lofty visions of Christ the Cosmic Logos and Word of God Incarnate, whose dignity ought not be tarnished with scenes of him duking it out with demons and ousting them into a herd of swine.
So there is an element of neutral "report" stories in the Gospels which aims only at giving us the cold facts, even something negative, without needing to promote an inspirational or religious or positive teaching. Most effort to derive a positive inspirational message from it is just subjective interpretation. The writings are a combination of the "myth" or religious and inspirational element along with this "report" only element which includes some non-inspiring negativity and which is also an essential component of the writings.
It's a myth intended to be inspirational.
Even if it does contain myth, it's not "myth" exclusively, as if you can neatly categorize every document into "report" only or "myth" only. That's not what the ancient written accounts are. All the historical writings, even Thucydides, are intended partly as "inspirational" rather than exclusively as "report" only. You can say some are more factual than others, but not that they are entirely factual and "report" only, with no part intended as inspirational. Or that all the written accounts must be exclusively "myth" or "report" only without a combination of the two. No, these accounts contain factual "reporting" plus also some "myth" and also some "inspirational" content, and these get intermixed so much that it's difficult to separate even individual parts of the account exclusively into "report" and "myth" and "inspiration" etc.
The authors knew the readers would understand the content both as "report" of fact but also as "myth" and "inspiration" and religious teaching with moral or spiritual interpretation. And nothing prevents it from being these together, both -- not either/or. How the readers would take the stories is the best guide to what the authors probably intended. Even today we learn much from a presentation which contains both fact being "reported" to us but also some "myth" or moralistic inspirational content, or some content intended mainly for entertainment, for impact, to keep our attention. It's seldom exclusively factual "report" only, but is usually intermixed with some drama added for impact, and a fictional element often gets mixed in.
Bible scholar Bart Ehrman (non-Christian) disagrees that the NT Jesus stories were intended only as non-accurate accounts:
Interview --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNIyyoRPbLM&t=1029s
interviewer: Some scholars have claimed, critical scholars, that the authors of the Gospels self-consciously told parables about Jesus. They were writing stories that didn't really actually happen, and knew that, but we don't get it because we're too literal-minded. Were the authors who told stories about Jesus that are likely not probably accurate -- Jesus bodily ascending into the sky, for instance -- did they know it was a fiction and that the readers would get it, that it was a metaphor, or 2) know it was a fiction but were passing it off as something that happened, or 3) did they really think it happened?
Ehrman: Right, so you know, at the end of the day, the question is impossible to answer. We don't know what the authors were actually thinking at the time. Did they think that they were telling a parable, did they think they were telling the literal truth, did they think the readers would get it? So we don't know that. What we do know is how readers always read these stories. And in almost every instance that we have any record of, readers read the stories as being literal descriptions of what happened. Now, did the authors mean for them to take it that way, and that they were mistaken? I don't know, but the fact that every early reader seems to have read these things as literally suggests to me that it was the literal mindset that was widespread in antiquity, and so probably the authors meant these to be taken literally as well.
I.e., the mindset of the readers mostly settles the question, taking the stories at face value, or generally intended to be taken as literally accurate, because we know this was how the readers understood them. But still this doesn't totally exclude any possibility whatever of a fictional element also being there; i.e., not every detail has to be exactly accurate, and both readers and writers understand this. E.g., some element of exaggeration or distortion is normal, such as to add emphasis to an important point. There can be less than 100% accuracy while still the main points are intended as substantially correct, or literally as accurate reporting of the events.
A tweaked reality of a super human person.
There could be some tweaking, but only because the "super human" element is already there, believed to be literally true -- believed because of good evidence -- and then to this there could be some tweaking added, for emphasis. The believer telling it to others, orally or in writing, might do such tweaking, which is less than 100% honest but probably normal. Probably most of the truth we learn has some elements of error mixed in with it, due to some flaw in understanding and communicating and our less than 100% objectivity. But still it's "the truth" more or less, we assume.
I'm pretty sure that the authors adding reports of miracles for dramatic effect wouldn't have seen it as lying.
Not as long as they truly believed the "miracle" element really was there, and what they're adding is only a little extra, out of their less-than-perfect scientifically-objective "just the facts ma'am" frame of mind. But if they fabricated entirely the miracle report, adding it to something which had no such element in it already, then they would have seen that as lying. Probably none of our ancient authors did that in the written accounts which have come down to us -- or it's the rare exception, and we need extra evidence or indication of it if we're to suspect blatant dishonesty. We can be skeptical of everything that looks suspicious, but we can't automatically rule out something unusual by assuming that the author was blatantly lying. Especially if there are multiple authors telling the same unusual reports.
It's not that kind of book.
What "kind of book" is it? It's not much different from most of the historical and other serious writings, all of which contain less than 100% honest content or reporting. Even if the NT writers are 5 or 10% less honest than Herodotus e.g., they are still bound to a certain standard for not "lying" which prevents them from injecting a foreign "miracle" element into subject matter which otherwise had no "miracle" element in it at all. Rather, the truth is that if they did add any such element, this is allowed ONLY because a major "miracle" element was already there, and the new element added was only minor "tweaking" added to it.
Again, there is virtually NO "kind of book" which is 100% accurate reporting, or intended to be factual reporting only in which there could be no "lying" of any kind whatever. The "kind of book" which the Gospels are is not different from other kinds in the standard for what may pass as normal tweaking (less than 100% factual and honest) vs. what would be understood as lying (blatant fabrication).
The "fiction" category is understood (in the ancient literature as well as modern). This "kind of book" is granted wide latitude -- e.g. "poetic license" -- understood by readers and writers, as to the dishonesty. But most literature, including NT writings, are not in that category. They are a "kind of book" which is understood to contain some "fiction" venturing outside the "just the facts ma'am" category, while at the same time also remaining within the "just the facts ma'am" category for much of the content. I.e., they're in both categories, or a mixture of the two, not always easy to separate. This includes most or all the historical writings, and almost anything not in the strict "fiction" category. Obviously some science books would come close to the absolutely-no-fiction-allowed category. Of course it's not possible to neatly classify every piece of literature neatly into its proper category.
So the NT/Gospel accounts are "the kind of book" which is allowed a limited "fiction" or "myth" element, but also containing the "report" factual element as essential, without the same license for "dishonesty" as the fiction "kind of book" is allowed, and following similar standards for not lying as the philosophy and history "kind of book" -- or differing only slightly from these. How readers generally understood them, as mostly literal, is a good guide to how the authors intended them to be understood.
simple summary: You cannot simply pigeon-hole the NT writings (and most other writings) into their designated category, saying they are "this kind of book" or "that kind" and thus judge the content as not factually or literally intended, or as "fiction" and thus to be dismissed as non-historical or inaccurate only because of this category or "this kind of book" designation you have pigeon-holed them into. No, you must analyze each part of the writing, trying to separate fact from fiction in each instance. And you must be willing to allow that we "just don't know" (or can only make a guess) in many cases what the truth is, or what happened; and yet still the source or "book" is helpful in our attempt to guess what happened, because the source appears near to the time in question and thus is one witness to the truth of what happened.
simpler summary: Analyzing/understanding the source (not categorizing it in order to dismiss it) + good guesswork = historical truth-seeking.
(this Wall of Text to be continued)