On one of the main pages to the TBK website, visitors can see that Acharya has provided a nice
little YouTube video which is a brief compiled presentation of what we should expect to see in her books "The Christ Conspiracy"
and "Suns of God". Here I'll be examining Acharya's own personal version of the "Christ-myth", possibly correcting
any errors that might come up along the way (which isn't even a matter of questioning) perhaps to offer insight into the Christ-myth
theory to see how unified in its premise foundations it truly is.
We'll start by pasting this nice little video onto this very page:
When you get done watching this interesting little clip, you can also read further below to see what
type of errors Acharya is spewing (in this particular instance, not to include her books, which are also more than likely,
full of garbage). We'll be pointing out the errors she ignorantly is unaware of in the midst of her resulted "research" and
to see what type of genuine, honest value comes out of it as we go along.
"The sun 'dies' for three days on December 22, the winter solstice, when it stops its movement south, to be born
again or resurrected on December 25, when it resumes its movement north."
Here is our first error that Acharya makes in this video, she even has the math all miscaculated
and wrong. In the New Testament, the gospel narrative portrays Jesus relating himself to the story of Jonah and the whale,
found in the Old Testament. Matthew 12:40 "For as Jonah was three
days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the
earth."
"In some areas, the calendar originally began in the constellation of Virgo, and the sun
would therefore be 'born of a Virgin.'"
Hold on, wait just a minute - I thought that the whole "born of a virgin" thing was plagarized from
pagan myth? Now it's based from the zodiac? Acharya wants us to believe that the early Christians read straight out of the
Illiad in order to write the NT and now she wants us to believe that it was borrowed from the zodiac. And I'm sure that the
pagan Illiad also zodiac-based, give me a break.
"The sun is the 'Light of the World'."
Talk about taking things out of metaphorical symbolic context, sheesh.
"The sun 'cometh on clouds, and every eye shall see him.'"
Nice try, Acharya, but you can find out for yourself that this has nothing to do with the sun and
cannot even be interpreted to something even close in meaning with the sun. The very quoted words from the NT are also quoted
from the OT, observe:
"The sun rising in the morning is the 'Saviour of mankind.'"
???
"The sun wears a 'crown of thorns' or halo."
And this is one of the biggest blunders she makes. A "crown of thorns" is not the same thing as a
halo, in fact, a crown of thorns was indeed a very literal thing in Roman history. In the Jewish Talmud, there are recorded
individuals whom were considered mentally ill by Roman authorities, and a Roman custom for the mentally ill was to place a
thornbush on their head, dress them in a purple robe, etc. Jesus-mythers might be able to argue from here that the Jesus story
was taken from the Talmud, but of course, as sound as that may seem the Christ-myth theory is based on putting distant puzzle
pieces together to form a desired image.
"The sun 'walks on water.'"
Well, not if that was copied from the Dionysian myth, I suppose Dionysus was a sun-god too, but before
I accept that claim, I will need some evidence.
"The sun is hung on a cross or 'crucified' which represents its passing through the equinoxes..."
Only by your own creative imaginative whacky theory. She's so desperate she's even willing to deny
that crucifiction was an historical reality just to suit her ideas!
Another interesting YouTube video of hers is based on the topic of Easter, let's have a look
at how looney this second video turns out to be:
"In fact, the gospel tale reflects the annual "crossification" of the sun through the vernal equinox (Spring),
at which time the sun is "resurrected" as the day begins to becomes longer than the night."
More imaginative nonsense, and no explanation to what this really has to do with anything in the
New Testament gospels. Honestly, what does the "vernal equinox" have to do with something that records the doings of a person
regarded as God incarnate? Really, little to nothing, its taken themes out of writing and putting them into a foreign genre
to produce expected results, ones which, I might add, have no direct connection in relevance to anything. We are left without
an explanation of how the extended duration of the day in contrast to nighttime during the "rebirth" period of the sun might
have anything to do with the physical resurrection of a Jewish man.
"The "Pagan" Easter is also the Passover, and Jesus Christ not only represents the sun but also the Passover lamb,
ritually sacraficed every year by a number of cultures, including the Egyptians, possibly as 4,000 years ago."
Pertaining to Christianity however, there are no such "ritual sacrificing" activities present.
Christ is the last flesh and blood sacrafice of humanity, thus, the ONLY flesh and blood
sacrifice of the Christian religion, and as a crucified man, his death and resurrection have no need for annual traditions.
True, Christians do celebrate pagan holidays in remembrance as a memorial of Christ's sacrafice for man's sins. But it is
no different than remembering the death of Princess Diana ten years after the fact. The annual "resurrections" of other cultures
had different meanings to their stories, as Christ died once and for all, the Greeks saw their gods in a mode of repetition
when it came to both life and death. There is no annual celebration in Christianity, only the memorial of Jesus Christ's life
acheivements, what the gospels record, what the Christian religion is truly about.
"The March dates were later applied to the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ."
Well finally she gets something right, but it still isn't in the way Acharya would like to make it
out to be. In fact this brings up a question I think she would have difficulty answering whilst clutching onto the Christ-myth
theory. Why is it that the dates were later applied, I wonder? Remember we are talking about the first early Christians and
the authors of the gospels, not the evolution of Christianity. Yet it's this type of twisting that Jesus-mythers go for in
order to point and say "Ha! got ya!" without really addressing the real issues at hand or elaborating in specific coherent
details and leaving large chronological gaps unsolved leaving gullible audiences to merely speculate that whatever they
are being told is the 100% truth. Why won't Acharya explain why such a date was not originally placed within
the New Testament if the early Christians of Hellenized Rome were so immediate to copy from the myths of the pagans? All she
says is that these dates were later applied to the gospel narrative. She believes that this somehow makes her case airtight;
in reality, she is leaving further questioning. An historian like Acharya, as she claims herself to be, should know the answer
to this question. Why isn't she telling her audience more of the specifics?
"In their attempt at explaining the existence of these pre-Christian motifs, early Christian apologists claimed the
devil had gotten there first!"
Did they really? At first glance it would certaintly seem as though they did, and they did
in fact make references to demonic spirits manifest through paganism. However, once again, Acharya S is wrong, and seems to
have missed the context by which the early Christian apologists were alluding too when they said such things as: "For
when they tell that Bacchus [or Dionysos], son of Jupiter [or Zeus], was begotten by [Jupiter's] intercourse with Semele,
and that he was the discoverer of the vine; and when they relate, that being torn in pieces, and having died, he rose again,
and ascended to heaven; and when they introduce wine into his mysteries, do I not perceive that [the devil] has imitated the
prophecy announced by the patriarch Jacob, and recorded by Moses?" (Dialogue with Trypho Chptr. 69). Continuing onward:
"But in no instance, not even in any of those called sons of Jupiter [Zeus], did they imitate the
being crucified; for it was not understood by them, all the things said of it having been put symbolically. And this,
as the prophet foretold, is the greatest symbol of His power and role; as is also proved by the things which
fall under our observation." (First Apology, Chapter 55). It seems more appropriate to say that the early Church
fathers, just like Justin Martyr (whom we have just quoted) was making the appeal to pagan authorities so that it could be
shown that pagans were false gods or imitations of God incarnated, whom, according to Christians, is Jesus Christ. Justin
Martyr was brought up in a pagan background and converted to Christianity in the mid-second century. His attestation that
the pagan parrallels were insufficient compared to Christ is indicated by "the things which fall under our observation." And
this gives strong evidence that pagan parrallels have and will never put up like Jesus-mythers so hopefully and wishfully
desire. This in fact, puts a nail in the coffin for a good portion of what could be made for the "Mythicist" case.
Lastly, Acharya makes reference to the Bishop of Alexandria Athanasius, who writes in his Letter
1 For 329: "Come, my beloved, the season calls us to keep the feast. Again, 'the
Sun of Righteousness, causing His divine beams to rise upon us, proclaims beforehand the time of the feast, in which, obeying
Him, we ought to celebrate it, lest when the time has passed by, gladness likewise may pass us by."
