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POSTED
26 SEPTEMBER, 2005
Is
the Story of Yeshua Pagan?
by
J.K. McKee
editor@tnnonline.net
Yeshua the Messiah issues a very strong warning to us in Matthew
12:35-37. He says, “The good man brings out of his good
treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his
evil treasure what is evil. But I tell you that every careless
word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in
the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified,
and by your words you will be condemned.” How many of us take
these words seriously, and realize that what we say affects
others?
As a Bible teacher, I must be very careful with what I say.
James the Just tells us that as teachers, “we will incur a
stricter judgment” (James 3:1). Whether this judgment is a
positive one or a negative one is entirely up to us. As Yeshua
admonishes us, the good man brings forth the good treasure out
of his heart. This good treasure must be that which blesses
people and helps them to grow spiritually. This good treasure
must help people have a better relationship with God and with
one another. It is the evil man who brings forth what is evil,
that which curses others and leads them away from the Lord.
Today, many are wondering why there is a sector of individuals
in the Messianic community who have denied Yeshua and either
converted to Judaism, or their own primitive form of “Yahwism.”
While the reasons vary, one thing that is occurring in our midst
is that idle words have taken root in the hearts of people,
which are now coming to full fruition. One of the statements
that is made far too frequently among Messianics today is:
“Christianity is pagan.” This statement, while often said
“innocently” to describe the ills and non-Biblical practices of
mainstream Christianity, can cause the naïve and spiritually
unstable person to begin to think that if the pagans believed
something, it must therefore be rejected.
The problem with this line of reasoning is two-fold: (1) The
problem is not with so-called “paganism” in Christianity; the
problem rather is with the fact that we have strayed from God’s
Word. We have not made the Bible and being Scripturally
compliant our top priority. (2) If you believe that the message
of the Apostolic Scriptures (New Testament) is “pagan,” you must
hold the Tanach (Old Testament) to the same standard. If you
believe that the story of Yeshua the Messiah and His
resurrection is copied off of pagan myths, then you also have to
believe that the Bible stories of the Tanach are also borrowed
or copied from the mythology of the Ancient Israelites’
neighbors.
As you can see, this can be a slippery slope—and unfortunately,
there are many people slipping.
Satan: The Master Counterfeiter
Satan, the accuser of the brethren, has only one simple goal in
mind. The Adversary knows that his days are numbered, and he
knows that his eternal fate in the Lake of Fire has been sealed.
He knows that there is no chance for redemption on his part. So,
because he cannot be redeemed, Satan wants to take as many
people with him to the Lake of Fire as possible. If he is going
down, he wants you to go down with him.
Throughout the centuries, the tactic of the enemy has been very
simple. Rather than get the masses to believe something that is
totally false, he has gotten the masses to believe many
half-truths that are often a mix of Biblical truth and
falsehood. Yeshua says in John 8:44, “You are of your
father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.
He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the
truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a
lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and
the father of lies.”
Many of
us in the Messianic community today used to celebrate the
holiday of Christmas. We now know that Christmas is unbiblical.[1]
Why is it unbiblical? It is not unbiblical in the sense that
Yeshua the Messiah was born of a virgin, that there were angels
present at His birth in Bethlehem, that there were magi who came
to Him, and that His Earthly parents were Joseph and Mary. It is
unbiblical in the sense that the veneration of trees is
prohibited by Jeremiah 10, and that December 25 has historically
been a day of pagan revelry. We do not celebrate Christmas as
Messianics because it is not mandated in Scripture, and the
specific practices related to it, notably the Christmas tree,
are condemned by Scripture.
This is one obvious example. But there are other things that are
a bit more complicated. How many of us have studied ancient
history or ancient mythology, and have seen the parallels that
exist with Scripture? How many of us have read stories in the
Bible, and have seen similar stories in other ancient cultures
or religions? How did these stories come about?
Satan does not have any original ideas of his own, so to deceive
people he must take the truth of God and distort it. He must
take what the Bible says, change it around slightly, and
repackage it. We are called as Believers to be spiritually
discerning, and test everything against the final standard: Holy
Scripture. So in this article, with understanding the fact that
Satan is the father of lies and that he distorts the truth of
God, we ask the question: Is the story
of Yeshua pagan?
Prometheus Bound
Perhaps one of the most interesting claims against why Yeshua
cannot be the Messiah is the claim that the story of Yeshua, as
espoused in the Gospels, is nothing new and that the early
Christian movement copied and repackaged pagan myths. It is said
among those trying to discredit the Messiahship of Yeshua that
we cannot believe in Him because there are mythological stories
of “god beings” coming down from the sky, performing miracles,
and even resurrecting from the dead. Those in the Messianic
community who are of the mentality that they must reject
anything “pagan,” as opposed to letting Scripture be the final
standard, easily fall prey to these arguments.
One of the stories that is often referenced, as being one of the
so-called sources for the material that the early Believers
supposedly borrowed from for the Gospels, is the Greek play
Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus. Many scholars date its production
about 463 B.C.E., in the period of the Persian Wars. The
background of the play is how the god Zeus has recently defeated
the Titans and his enemies led by his father Kronos. Prometheus
and his mother are the only Titans who sided with Zeus in the
conflict, and Zeus is now consolidating his power. The story
opens up with the god Prometheus being punished because he has
come down to Earth and given fire to mankind. Two characters,
Strength and Violence (Kratos and Bia), are given the job of
carrying the mighty Prometheus, who is to be nailed to a rock by
Hephaestus:
Here we
have reached the remotest region of the earth, the haunt of
the Scythians, a wilderness without a footprint. Hephaestus,
do your duty. Remember what command the Father laid on you.
Here is Prometheus, the rebel: Nail him to the rock; secure
him on this towering summit. Fast in the unyielding grip of
adamantine chains. It was your treasure that he stole, the
flowery splendour of all-fashioning fire, and gave to men—an
offence intolerable to the gods, for which he now must
suffer, till he be taught to accept the sovereignty of Zeus
and cease acting as champion of the human race.[2]
Hepheastus, preparing to nail
Prometheus to this rock to be exposed to the elements, attests
that Prometheus was a god whose crime was loving mankind and
trying to help them:
Son of
sagacious Themis, god of mountainous thoughts, with heart as
sore as yours I now shall fasten you in bands of bronze
immovable to this desolate peak, where you will hear no
voice, nor see a human form; but scorched with the sun’s
flaming rays your skin will lose its bloom of freshness.
Glad you will be to see the night cloaking the day with her
dark spangled robe; and glad again when the sun’s warmth
scatters the frost at dawn. Each changing hour will bring
successive pain to rack your body; and no man yet born shall
set you free. Your kindness to the human race has earned you
this. A god who would not bow to the gods’ anger—you,
transgressing right, gave privileges to mortal men. For that
you shall keep watch upon this bitter rock, standing
upright, unsleeping, never bowed in rest. And many groans
and cries of pain shall come from you, all useless; for the
heart of Zeus is hard to appease. Power newly won is always
harsh.[3]
Those who
believe that Prometheus is a “prototype” of Yeshua the Messiah
will note that Prometheus came down as a “god-man” from the sky
to “save mankind.” But this is an exaggeration when we read the
play of Prometheus Bound. The message of the Bible is that
Yeshua came to Earth to atone for the sins of humanity, so that
we might have eternal communion with God the Father. In
contrast, Prometheus “stole fire from heaven and gave it to
them; and he taught them the basic mental and manual skills…What
wins our favour for Promethus is largely the fact that he
believed in, and wanted to help, the human race as it is.”[4]
But Prometheus was not the Savior of humanity as Yeshua is
portrayed in the Apostolic Scriptures.
Prometheus, because of his crime of giving these advancements to
human beings, is shackled to a rock where he will remain for
each day until the fury of Zeus subsides. He will be tormented
each day by wild birds, specifically the eagle of Zeus. Because
Prometheus is divine and immortal, this punishment will be
never-ending. As Hermes, the messenger god, says near the end of
the play,
First, Zeus
will split this rugged chasm with the shock and flame of
lightning, and entomb you underground still clamped on this
embracing rock. When a long age has passed, you will return
into the light; and then the dark-winged hound of Zeus will
come, the savage eagle, an uninvited banqueter, and all day
long will rip your flesh in rags and feast upon your liver,
gnawing it black. And you may hope for no release from such
a torment, till some god be found to take your pains upon
him, and of his own will descend to sunless Hades and the
black depths of Tartarus. So think again; this is no
fabricated boast, but truth as Zeus has spoken it, who
cannot lie, but will accomplish every word his mouth has
uttered.[5]
Most of the dialogue that you see in Prometheus Bound is typical
drama as would be consistent in any classical Greek play.
Because of this, very little information itself about the story
of Prometheus will be in the play, and so we are left with
having to read between the lines and piece together what we
think the story is telling us. Prometheus Bound ends with a
dramatic conclusion, with Prometheus breaking loose of his
chains and rising up:
Now it is
happening: threat gives place to performance. The earth
rocks; thunder, echoing from the depth, roars in answer;
fiery lightnings twist and flash. Dust dances in a whirling
fountain; blast of the four winds skirmish together, set
themselves in array for battle; sky and sea rage
indistinguishably. The cataclysm advances visibly upon me,
sent by Zeus to make me afraid. O Earth, my holy mother, O
sky, where sun and moon give light to all in turn, you see
how I am wronged![6]
We are told in this translation of
Prometheus Bound that “The rock collapses and disappears, as the
CHORUS scatter in all directions.”[7]
Prometheus Bound, again being a play, is intended to entertain
an audience and as such is given a dramatic conclusion.
Are there Parallels Between Prometheus and
Yeshua?
Prometheus Bound is just one of many mythological stories that
some like to mention in order to discredit the gospel message
and life of Yeshua the Messiah. The group that we are having to
contend with in the Messianic movement today is the Jewish
anti-missionaries, who are targeting Christians interested in
their Hebraic Roots for conversion to Judaism. Many of these
people who are examining their Hebraic Roots are spiritually
naïve, and have been influenced by sensationalistic teachings
that harp on the “paganism” of Christianity. They are easy
targets for believing that the gospel message of Yeshua has been
borrowed from pagan mythology.
Anyone who is objective can see that there are a few parallels
between the story of Prometheus and the life of Yeshua.
Prometheus was a god who came to Earth to help mankind. Yeshua
the Messiah, the Son of God, “emptied Himself, taking the form
of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men”
(Philippians 2:7). Prometheus was found guilty by Zeus for the
crime of helping humans, and was ordered to be chained to a rock
so that he could be tortured. Yeshua, in contrast, was bruised
and beaten and nailed to a Roman cross. Yeshua had all the sins
of the world placed upon Him so that the Father could not look
upon Him: “About the ninth hour Yeshua cried out with a loud
voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli,
lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My
God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’” (Matthew 27:46;
cf. Psalm 22:1). Prometheus, at the end of the play, breaks
loose of his chains and there is an earthquake. At the
resurrection of Yeshua, there is an earthquake: “And behold, a
severe earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord
descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone and sat
upon it” (Matthew 28:2).
There are some similarities between the story of Prometheus and
what the Gospels tell us about the life of Yeshua. But there are
some serious differences as well. Prometheus rebelled against
the authority of the god Zeus in aiding humanity. Yeshua the
Messiah, the Son of the One True God, obeyed the will of His
Father. He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My Father, if it
is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but
as You will” (Matthew 26:39). Yeshua the Messiah was a willing
servant to the point of death, unlike Prometheus who defied
authority.
To be
perfectly honest, what does the story of Prometheus, the story
of a rebel who wanted to “help mankind,” sound more like?
In Isaiah 14:12-14, we see a reference to the “star of the
morning” or helel (llyh),
which the Latin Vulgate rendered as lucifer. This is
often viewed as being a reference to Satan or the Accuser:
“How
you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the
dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened
the nations! But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to
heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I
will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north.
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make
myself like the Most High’” (cf. Luke 10:18).
Our Adversary once had a high and exalted position in Heaven,
but because he wanted to be like God, he was cast down to the
Earth. His eternal fate is sealed, and his goal is to take as
many with him as possible. One of the enemy’s tactics with
deception is deceiving vulnerable human beings by getting people
to think that he is actually helping them.
What is interesting is that just as Prometheus is bound to a
rock, so will the Adversary be bound in the Bottomless Pit for a
thousand years:
“And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the
devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he
threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it
over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any
longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these
things he must be released for a short time” (Revelation
20:2-3).
We are not told in the play Prometheus Bound what happens to
Prometheus after he arises from his chains. We may safely assume
that he tries to “help mankind” further. What is interesting,
about the story of Prometheus Bound, is that it actually tells
us more about Satan than it does about Yeshua. Satan has been
trying to “help mankind” for millennia. Human beings have been
foolish enough to sell their souls to the Devil, thinking that
it will advance their status. Satan defied the will of God, and
during the thousand-year reign of the Messiah on Earth will be
bound. He will be given a short time of release until he and all
the condemned are cast into the Lake of Fire for eternity. Satan
will arise from his chains in the Bottomless Pit, just as
Prometheus broke free.
The spiritually undiscerning person who wants to not believe in
Messiah Yeshua is going to believe that Prometheus Bound was
actually used by the early Believers and repackaged into the
Gospels. What this person does not understand is that the enemy
has always known his fate, and several centuries before Yeshua,
Satan inspired the Greek playwright Aeschylus to write
Prometheus Bound. The enemy knew that the Messiah was coming, he
knew the prophecies and typeology of the Hebrew Scriptures of
what the Messiah was to do, and he wanted to distort the truth
so that people would reject it as a myth. Sadly, this is what is
happening among many today.
Holding the Tanach to the Same Standard
The problem with people who are trying to make the message of
the Apostolic Scriptures (New Testament) into one where the
early Disciples and Apostles of Yeshua copied off of pagan
mythology to describe the Messiah, and thus we must reject their
message—is that they are often always unwilling to hold the
Tanach (Old Testament) to the exact same standard. If indeed the
Apostles copied off of pagan mythology to describe the life
story and purpose of Yeshua, how do we not know that the writers
of the Hebrew Bible and the Sages of Ancient Israel did not do
the same? How do we not know that the stories of the Tanach,
including the Exodus, the giving of the Ten Commandments, Joshua
and the Battle of Jericho, David and Goliath, etc., are not
fabrications borrowed and rewritten from the pagan cultures
which surrounded the Ancient Israelites?
The Epic of Gilgamesh
There are many stories that those wishing to discredit the Bible
have said that the Ancient Israelites borrowed from other
cultures. Perhaps one of the most commonly known of these
stories is the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. The tablets of the
Epic of Gilgamesh were discovered by British archaeologist A.H.
Laynard between 1845-1851 in an excavation around the city of
Nineveh. These tablets were sent to the British Museum for
examination. George Smith produced a translation of these
tablets in 1872, and published them in a report called the
“Chaldean Account of the Deluge.” Archaeologists date the
composition of the Epic of Gilgamesh anywhere from between
2000-1800 B.C.E. This pre-dates the composition of the Torah or
Pentateuch by at least 300 years.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a story that is two-fold. It is first
the account of one man, Gilgamesh, who looses his immortality
and becomes a human. Part of this same story, that often
receives more attention, is Atrahasis, which is an account of a
major flood that the gods send to destroy humanity. Many critics
of the Bible are of the opinion that the Ancient Israelites used
these, and other stories, to compose the account of Adam and Eve
in the Garden of Eden and Noah’s Flood. These liberals never
take into consideration the fact that the Biblical accounts
could have been distorted following mankind’s dispersion at the
Tower of Babel, and then those dispersed repackaged the accounts
the Bible gives. Most disturbingly, the thought that the Ancient
Israelites copied “myths” off of their neighbors is not just
voiced by liberal Christians, but also by many in Judaism. The
following comes from the introduction of the Book of Genesis in
The Jewish Study Bible:
“Largely
because of its focus on creation, the primeval history exhibits
a number of contacts with Mesopotamian mythology. The account of
creation with which Genesis opens (1.1-2.3), for example, has
affinities with Enuma elish, a Babylonian epic, which
tells how one god, Marduk, attained supremacy over the others
and created the world by splitting his aquatic enemy in half.
The story of Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden of Eden
(2.25-3.24) displays similarities with Gilgamesh, an epic
poem that tells how its hero lost the opportunity for
immortality and came to terms with his humanity. And the story
of Noah (6.5-9.17) has close connections with Atrahasis,
a Mesopotamian story in which the gods send a flood to wipe out
the human race, with the exception of one man from whom
humankind begins afresh (the story was eventually incorporated
into Gilgamesh as well). In each case, the biblical
narrator has adopted the Mesopotamian forerunner to Israelite
theology. The primeval history thus evidences both the deep
continuities and the striking points of discontinuity of
biblical Israel with its Mesopotamian antecedents and
contemporaries.”[8]
As you are probably aware, there
is substantial debate among theologians regarding the Deluge or
Noah’s Flood. While there is endless speculation about where
Noah’s Ark is, there is also discussion about whether the Flood
talked about in Genesis 6 was in actuality a worldwide Flood, or
just a regionalized Flood. Liberals all hold to the position
that the Flood was regionalized in the Middle East, and that the
Ancient Israelites borrowed its symbolism from the mythology of
the Sumerians and Babylonians. Consider, for example, the
construction of the ship as described by the Epic of Gilgamesh:
In the first light of dawn all my household
gathered round me, the children brought pitch and the men
whatever was necessary. On the fifth day I laid the keel and
the ribs, then I made fast the planking. The groundspace was
one acre, each side of the deck measured one hundred and
twenty cubits, making a square. I built six decks below,
seven in all, I divided them into nine sections with
bulkheads between. I drove in wedges where needed, I saw to
the punt-poles, and laid in supplies. The carriers brought
oil in baskets, I poured pitch into the furnace and asphalt
and oil; more oil was consumed in caulking, and more again
the master of the boat took into his stores. I slaughtered
bullocks for the people and every day I killed sheep. I gave
the shipwrights wine to drink as though it were river water,
raw wine and red wine and oil and white wine. There was
feasting then as there is at the time of the New Year’s
festival; I myself anointed my head. On the seventh day the
boat was complete.
Then was
the launching full of difficulty; there was shifting of
ballast above and below till two thirds was submerged. I
loaded into her all that I had of gold and of living things,
my family, my kin, the beast of the field both wild and
tame, and all the craftsmen…[9]
Consider the parallel between this and Genesis 6:13-16:
“Then
God said to Noah, ‘The end of all flesh has come before Me; for
the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I
am about to destroy them with the earth. Make for yourself an
ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark with rooms, and shall
cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you shall make
it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth
fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. You shall make a
window for the ark, and finish it to a cubit from the top; and
set the door of the ark in the side of it; you shall make it
with lower, second, and third decks.”
The Epic of Gilgamesh also describes the deluge that eventually
came from the gods:
A stupor of
despair went up to heaven when the god of the storm turned
daylight to darkness, when he smashed the land like a cup.
One whole day the tempest raged, gathering fury as it went,
it poured over the people like the tides of a battle; a man
could not see his brother nor the people be seen from
heaven. Even the gods were terrified at the flood, they fled
to the highest heaven, the firmament of Anu; they crouched
against the walls, cowering like curs. Then Ishtar the
sweet-voiced Queen of Heaven cried out like a woman in
travail: “Alas the days of old are turned to dust because I
commanded evil; why did I command this evil in the council
of all the gods? I commanded wars to destroy the people, but
are they not my people, for I brought them forth? Now like
the spawn of fish they float in the ocean.” The great gods
of heaven and hell wept, they covered their mouths.[10]
This
sounds very similar to Genesis 7:17-23:
“Then the flood came upon the earth for forty days, and the
water increased and lifted up the ark, so that it rose above the
earth. The water prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth,
and the ark floated on the surface of the water. The water
prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high
mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered. The water
prevailed fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered.
All flesh that moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and
beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and
all mankind; of all that was on the dry land, all in whose
nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. Thus He
blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the
land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the
sky, and they were blotted out from the earth; and only Noah was
left, together with those that were with him in the ark.”
The Epic of Gilgamesh is only one of many other mythological
stories that sounds similar to events in the Bible. Many would
have us believe that the Epic of Gilgamesh, and other such
accounts, predated what is recorded for us in the Torah and the
Tanach, and were copied and changed by the Ancient Israelites.
Liberal theologians like to tell us that these are just stories
designed to inspire us and teach us lessons, but are not to be
interpreted literally or taken seriously because they probably
never happened. Or, if they did occur, they certainly did not
occur on any level that the Bible affords them.
If we are to accept the premise that the story of Yeshua the
Messiah is pagan, because there are some mythological stories
that are similar to the account of Him as portrayed in the
Gospels, then to be consistent we must accept the premise
that the stories of the Tanach are likewise borrowed from
mythology as well. So, if we are going to reject the
Messiahship of Yeshua on the basis that the “early Christian
movement” borrowed ideas from mythology, so must we reject the
message of the Tanach and the validity of the Law because the
Ancient Israelites were only borrowing from their
contemporaries. Where will this ultimately lead us?
Messianic Higher Criticism
While there are individuals in the Messianic community who have
denied Yeshua as their Lord and Savior, errantly believing
themselves to have been led into “greater Truth” with a capital
T, the reality remains that many of them have actually become
liberals in their theological approach—without even knowing
it! They are not looking at the Bible conservatively.
A term that is often used in Biblical apologetics is higher
criticism. Higher criticism is to be distinguished from
lower criticism. Lower criticism, also referred to as
form criticism, tries to determine what the original reading
of a Biblical text was. Lower criticism comes from the
perspective that there is some variance in the readings of the
Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts of the Bible, and tries to
determine through comparison of manuscripts, manuscript
fragments, ancient translations, and quotations of Scripture in
ancient literature, what the original reading of a Biblical text
probably was. Lower criticism is a somewhat scientific practice,
which involves very few theological value judgments. Lower
criticism is the source of the many valuable Hebrew and Greek
lexicons and dictionaries that we use today in examining the
Scriptures.
Higher criticism, in contrast, is much different. Higher
criticism arose in Germany in the mid-1800s, in the midst of
incredible social tension and the genesis of Darwin’s theory of
evolution. The German political landscape of the time was quite
authoritarian. Even though Germany was a democracy, it was in
name only. There was censorship of the media, and criticism of
the government was unacceptable. As a consequence of
intellectuals being unable to readily write about politics, many
entered into areas of social science. The study of psychology
arose with intellectuals trying to determine what humanity’s
problem was in his brain, without any concern for the place of a
Supreme Being or spirituality. It is with this backdrop that
higher criticism arose.
Those in Germany who entered into the study of theology were
often affected by these ideas. While the existence of God was
assumed, the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures were
not. Higher critics began to question not only the origin of the
Scriptures, but also the purpose of them as well. Foundational
Biblical beliefs that we might take for granted, such as the
belief that salvation only comes from one Source, the reality
that we are sinners, that unless we are spiritually regenerated
we will be punished eternally, were all looked at with disdain
by the higher critics. Later, it was assumed that ancient
religions borrowed from one another, and the religion of the Old
and New Testaments borrowed extensively from that of the ancient
cultures of the Middle East. Over time, these sorts of beliefs
began to be adopted by many Christian denominations, and they
are the primary cause of both congregational and denominational
splits in mainstream Christianity today.
It was from this same strain of thought that Reform Judaism
arose in Germany in the mid-1800s. Reform Judaism could be
easily defined as a “cultural Judaism,” in addition to being
theologically liberal. Reform Judaism today treats the Sabbath,
appointed times, kosher laws, and other related practices as
being only cultural observances of the Jewish people. Reform
Judaism today does not often frown on abortion or homosexuality.
What is so sad is that today there are people in the Messianic
movement who are questioning the Scriptures in the same way as
the early higher critics once did. This is not to say that we
should not view the composition of Scripture in light of its
historical context. But, what is happening is that people are
asking questions—not with the purpose of confirming what the
Bible says—but rather with the purpose of doubting the
Scriptures. Higher critics ultimately do not want to deal with
the issue of sin and the reality that they need a Redeemer. We
should not be surprised that those denying Yeshua in our midst
do not want to deal with their sin, either.
Is the story of Yeshua pagan? The story of Yeshua as outlined in
the Gospels is only pagan and borrowed from mythology
if other stories in Scripture are likewise pagan and
borrowed from mythology. The ultimate result of this must be
throwing away the Bible and becoming an atheist. But we must
know that the enemy always counterfeits God’s truth, and that he
is very crafty in copying off His Word.
Is the story of Yeshua pagan? Our answer must be a resounding:
No!
J.K. McKee (B.A., University of Oklahoma; M.A., Asbury
Theological Seminary) is the editor of TNN Online (www.tnnonline.net)
and is a Messianic apologist. He is author of several books,
including: The New Testament Validates Torah, Torah In the
Balance, Volume I, and When Will the Messiah Return?.
He has also written many articles on the Two Houses of Israel
and Biblical theology, and is presently focusing on Messianic
commentaries on various books of the Bible.
NOTES
[1]
Consult the editor’s article “The
Christmas Challenge.”
[2]
Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound and Other
Plays, trans. Philip Vellacott (London: Penguin
Books, 1961), 20.
[3]
Ibid., 21.
[4]
Ibid.,
9.
[5]
Ibid., pp 50-51.
[6]
Ibid., 52.
[7]
Ibid.
[8]
Jon D. Levenson, “Genesis,” in Adele
Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds., The Jewish Study
Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 9-10.
[9]
N.K. Sandars, The Epic of Gilgamesh
(London: Penguin Books, 1972), 109.
[10]
Ibid., pp 110-111.
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