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

I will respond to his points in order of how he laid them out. Pro says that he is not trying to prove or disprove the existence of the historical Jesus - rather try to prove that he was a fabrication. And I completely agree with what he is saying - he never tries to say that Jesus never existed. However my point is that if the events as told in the Gospels are shown to be true, then the parallels that pro is attempting to assert are redundant. The reasoning behind this is that the whole point of the parallels is to try to get the point across that the life and events of Jesus are completely and utterly fabricated. But if those events - the crucifixion, his followers, his birth etc. are proven to be true then it shows that they were not, as my opponent has suggested, a fabrication of Horus, but rather historical events. As for the 'Pagan Copy-Cat' movement, I think pro will find that the authors he mentioned were actually part of the movement, which lasted from around 1770 to the end of National Socialism. But it isn't an important point in terms of the debate. My opponent then goes on to respond to the individual parallels, and I will respond to them in order. Crucifixion Firstly, Pro states that Jesus' death isn't always depicted as a crucifixion. But this is simply not true. 'Stauros' translates literally as 'Cross'; and to be 'hung on a tree' would translate as 'hung on wood' - i. e what a cross was made of. In both the KJV and NIV versions of the Bible, the verses pro mentions translate to 'cross'. The Roman method of Crucifixion was that criminals were nailed to two pieces of wood that made the shape of a cross. If this is not crucifixion, I don't know what is! In fact, we have evidence to suggest with some certainty that Jesus was indeed crucified as shown in the following source; 'And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross' - Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 3 Bearing in mind this is from an unbiased primary source, (Josephus was a Jew and therefore had no ulterior motive) historians can establish that Jesus was indeed crucified. So I think that it is firmly established that actually Jesus' crucifixion was indeed a historical event - and so any theory of 'fabrication' based on earlier events is redundant. Resurrection Now I know that one of the rules my opponent stated at the beginning of the debate was that I could not attack his sources. But that is what I am going to do. You can ignore this for the integrity of the debate, but I feel like it is a very important point to make. Notice that none of the sources that pro cites are PRIMARY sources. They are all secondary sources. This causes all kinds of problems in terms of reliability - and so to make any valid point becomes very problematic without quoting from the primary source. Pro also mentions Matthew 12:40 which is fair enough - but the difference is that Jesus does not stay in the 'underworld', he only remains there for 'three days and three nights' and then was resurrected, different to Horus who remained there for the rest of time (in some interpretations). Nevertheless, pro has still failed to counter any of my points; merely using quotes from these secondary sources does nothing to prove the causal effect between the two - nor do they suggest why their interpretation is the correct one from the thousands of primary texts on Horus. All pro is doing is re-stating the similarities and does not respond at all to my objections. Virgin Birth As for the Virgin Birth (or immaculate conception), I think I should give the definition - It would mean that (in this case Mary) was impregnated without the act of sexual intercourse. (I am not going to argue the possibility of this though). But with Isis, I think it is very obvious that she had sex with the make-shift phallus. And so it is nothing like the Virgin Birth as described in Christoan Theology, and so the parallel is redundant. 12 Companions I think my opponent is getting confused here. When I used the 12 companions as an example in the Generalization fallacy, I cited it as a minor point, asserting that there will have been only a few texts out of over 3000 That mention that Horus had 12 companions. There will have been many texts that also state other, contradictory qualities. But even though there are these texts that each contradict the statement 'Horus had 12 companions', pro still used the statement despite the contradictory nature of the primary sources. December 25 With the December 25 date, the simple fact is that according to the Bible, the date of Jesus' birth was not mentioned. When the Church decided on this date, they were acting completely unbiblically, unhistorically and contrary to the life of Jesus. So if we are looking at the origins of Christianity, there isn't even a mention of December the 25 and so you can not draw the parallel. As I have enough characters left, I will outline other fallacies that arise when you try to draw parallels to Jesus of Nazareth like my opponent has done. The Chronological fallacy This fallacy states that in order for my opponent's arguments to succeed, he must provide evidence that the parallels he mentioned preceded the writing of the Gospels and the New Testament epistles; which were all written in the First Century AD. Because if they didn't, there would be no causal effect between Christianity and Egyptian Mythology and they would therefore be redundant. As a matter of fact, we have good evidence to think that because these pagan religions were at their peak in the 3rd Century AD, most of their writings are dated then. So pro needs to show that the primary sources predated Christianity for his parallels to succeed. Difference fallacy This states that the similarities mentioned by Pro are over-emphasized and he does not mention the countless differences between these two religions. One example would be that in Christianity there is an obvious, reccuring Moral Code; whereas in the Egyptian Mythology there are none. Rather they are typically tales of the Gods and their adventures, where they act in their own selfish interests. Another example is the nature of Christ's death - he died for the sake of mankind, whereas there is no example of Horus or any other Egyptian God doing anything of the sort. Pro needs to address these differences in order to make an effective argument. So in Conclusion, In order for pro's argument to be effective, he has to do 2 things. For each of his parallels, he has to quote the primary sources that mentions them, and he has to show the causal relation between the two beliefs. Otherwise, there is no reason to believe that the life of Jesus was fabricated. And I think that pro has failed to do this. Sources: Wolfhart Pannenberg - Jesus: God and Man (scm classics) Mark Foreman - Come Let us Reason