The life of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, as told through the New Testament, is a fabrication

He focuses his objection on the assertion that there are parallels between the account of Jesus as told in the Gospels, and the myth of Horus. This is otherwise known as the 'Pagan copy-cat' movement, which states that the story of Jesus is a copy of earlier pagan religions. It orginiated in the late 1700's in Germany, by a basic university school called the 'religionsgeschichte schule' (History of Religion school) who proposed this idea. The objection was especially common in Nazi Germany, but soon died out - because critical scholars looked at the evidence - and found none. However it has seen a revival in recent times, mainly due to the 'zeitgeist' movie, which has been spread around by the Internet. But why is any of this not true? Well, for many reasons. I will show why my opponent does not succeed in showing Jesus was a fabrication. The first reason why these parallels do not work is because there is no evidence whatsoever of any sort of pagan religions present in first century Palestine. Both early Judaism and Christianity were highly exclusive religions - whereas pagan religions were highly syncretic. The Jewish people would have NEVER allowed pagan religions in their country, let alone their beliefs! To think that pagan religions could have any influence of Jewish and Christian beliefs is entirely contrary to where the evidence lies. The second reason why you can't use these parallels is because it is a 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' fallacy. The fallacy goes like this: 1) Event A occurred before event B 2) Therefore A caused B As you can see, this just does not follow. Just because these similar pagan beliefs pre-dated Christianity, does not mean that there was a causal effect between the two. And to assert so (as pro has done) would be committing This Post Hoc fallacy. In order to show an effective argument, you have to SHOW evidence for the Causal effect - not just state them. Another similar fallacy my opponent is commiting is the Genetic Fallacy - that is, attempting to discredit a belief system by stating it's origins. The third reason why these parallels fail is because it's entire argument rests on the idea that Jesus never even existed, and that nothing Jesus has been told to do or say ever happened. Because if any of these things did happen, the parallels would be redundant. The problem however, is that the vast majority of all serious scholars agree that Jesus did indeed exist - secular AND religious - and the events presented in the gospels are accurate accounts of what happened. To assert that Jesus never even existed is completely unscholarly and unhistorical. For example, John Dominic Crossen, a very liberal Irish scholar, said that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the most verifiable fact in the ancient world. Now, I will show that the main parallels are redundant. I won't respond to all of them as to do so would take up too many characters. So I will explain why the main points are false, then explain why the rest of the points are false. So the first point that my opponent makes is that Horus was born on December 25th. Now that would be a parallel to Jesus if it were true. But it simply isn't! The date of Jesus's birth is not at all mentioned in the Gospels and the date was formulated by the Christian Church in the 4th and 5th centuries, not at the origins of Christianity in the 1st Century. He also says that Horus' birth was attended by 3 wise men. This is a non-point, as there is no record in either the Horus or Jesus stories of anything of the sort. In the Bible, men came bearing three gifts. Nothing is said of the number, or the year - it is likely that Jesus was 3 years old at this time. In the Horus myth, nothing is said of three wise men coming to his birth, so I do not know where pro has got this from. The next point he makes is that Horus was born of a virgin. When taking this into account, we must realize that the story of Horus was formulated over 3000 years, taken from many texts - many of which contradict themselves. The general consensus of these texts concerning Horus' birth is that he was born of two Gods - Isis and Osiris. Note that Isis is noted as the WIFE of Osiris - so we can assume that she is not a virgin. And as he quite rightly pointed out, this is not similar at all similar to th Virgin Birth as Isis had sexual relations with a make-shift phallus, which is so far removed to the Biblical account you can't even draw comparison. My opponent also states that Horus was crucified. Again, this is not true. Out of the many versions of the story of Horus - some say that he never died, some say he was killed after being stung by a scorpion, and many mix his death with Osiris'. None of the myths state that Horus was nailed to a cross the Roman way. And therefore none say that he was crucified. Another point he makes is that Horus was resurrected. But when Horus died, he became Ruler of the Underworld. This is in no way a resurrection as he never came back to this world after he died. In other words, he died, but did not return. So by the very definition of what is said, Horus did was not resurrected in any definition of the word. As for many other of my opponent's points, they committ one of two fallacies: the Generalization fallacy and the Terminology fallacy. The Generalization fallacy means that out of all the texts that mention Horus - which differ greatly and contradict themselves constantly - pro has cherry-picked qualities that are mentioned to form a morphed version of Horus that is not reperesentive of the actual depiction shown in the primary texts. This means that out of the thousands of texts, at least 1 is going to mention that, for example, Horus has 12 companions. And pro has taken this quality - which would have only been mentioned a few times in the thousands of texts - and states it as an over-riding quality which it just isn't. The second fallacy pro makes is the Terminology fallacy. This is where events in the lives of the mythical God are expressed in Christian terms - however far removed they are. Pro makes this fallacy many times, mentioning 'baptized' (a Christian ritual of spiritual cleansing using water which didn't exist before the 1st century), 'messiah' (a Greek word - meshiac) and 'lamb of God' (Christian terminology only found in the Bible). Horus would never have done anything of the sort and to say that what he did and what he was called is anything in relation to what the Gospel mentions is entirely fallacious. I apologise for the length of my argument, but there is so much to say and I could say much more on this matter!