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Originally Posted by davem
- after all any objective observer can find more of Hellenism (where demi-gods, virgin births & the like abound) than Judaism in the Christian story?
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While I agree entirely with the case you are making, I feel moved to intervene with a point of information. Comparison to Danae and the golden rain may seem vaguely Annunciationesque, but the virgin births really came from Persian tradition-probably via the Jews, who were influenced in important ways by Zoroastrianism.
As for your example of demi-gods, Herakles and co. don't show remotely Christ like characteristics-with the glaring exception of Dionysus, who is certainly a god, not a demi-god, and a great and terrible one at that after a reading of the
Bacchae. Demi-gods is a rather misleading term I think unless we're dealing with the Arian heresy.
So...in short...Hellenic similarities come down to coincidence and fundamental motifs in myth and legend. Persian influence on Judaism and Christianity is more hirstorically traceable; it must be remembered that Christianity is a religion of the east.
There's my quarrel to sidetrack the argument, in which I am entirely of
davem's view.