Boken "The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors" retade upp en del kristna som fick sina illussioner krossade när Kersey Graves visade på att det fanns åtskilliga så kallade mästare eller messiasfigurer före Jesus med ungefär samma historia och slutöde.

"The Christian bible, like other bibles, having been written in an age when science was but budding into life, and philosophy had attained but a feeble growth, should be expected to teach many things incompatible with the principles of modern science. And accordingly it is found to contain, like other bibles, numerous statements so obviously at war with present established scientific truths that almost any school-boy, at the present day, can demonstrate their falsity. Let the unbiased reader examine and compare the oriental and Christian bibles together, and he will note the following facts, viz: --

1. That the cardinal religious conceptions of all bibles are essentially the same -- all running in parable grooves.

2. That every chapter of every bible is but a transcript of the mental chart of the writer.

3. That no bible, pagan or Christian, contains anything surpassing the natural, mental and moral capacity of the writer to originate. And hence no divine aid or inspiration was necessary for its production.

4. That the moral and religious teachings of no bible reach a higher altitude than the intelligence and mental development of the age and country which produced it.

5. That the Christian bible, in some respects, is superior to some of the other bibles, but only to the extent to which the age in which it was written was superior in intelligence and natural mental capacity to the era in which the older bibles were penned; and that this superiority consists not its more exalted religious conceptions, but only in the fact that, being of more modern origin, the progress of mind had worn away some of the legendary rubbish of the past. Being written in a later and more enlightened age, it is consequently a little less encrusted with mythological tradition and oriental imagery. Though not free from these elements, it possesses them in less degree. And by comparing Christ's history with those of the oriental Gods, it will be found: --

1. That he taught no new doctrine or moral precept.

2. That he inculcated the same religion and morality, which he elaborated, as other moral teachers, to great extremes.

3. That Christ differs so little in his character, preaching, and practical life from some of the oriental Gods, that no person whose mind is not deplorably warped and biased by early training can call one divine while he considers the other human.

4. That if Christ was a God, then all were Gods."


Här är hela boken:


http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/kersey_graves/16/

Det var ju uppe i en nu borthackad tråd att "Graves korsfäste en del av dem själv..."

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/Je ... denceCrucifiedSaviors.htm
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/graves.html

"The newborn Krishna was presented with gold, frankincense and myrrh."

False. There is no evidence for this in any Hindu text. It was first claimed in Kersey Graves' The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors (1875), with no citations.


The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors: Or Christianity Before Christ is unreliable, but no comprehensive critique exists. Most scholars immediately recognize many of his findings as unsupported and dismiss Graves as useless. After all, a scholar who rarely cites a source isn't useful to have as a reference even if he is right. For examples of specific problems, however, see Hare Jesus: Christianity's Hindu Heritage, and some generally poor but not always incorrect Christian rebuttals. A very helpful discussion of related methodological problems by renowned scholar Bruce Metzger is also well worth reading ("Methodology in the Study of the Mystery Religions and Early Christianity" 2002). In general, even when the evidence is real, it often only appears many years after Christianity began, and thus might be evidence of diffusion in the other direction. Another typical problem is that Graves draws far too much from what often amounts to rather vague evidence. In general, there are ten kinds of problems that crop up in Graves' work here and there:

Graves often does not distinguish his opinions and theories from what his sources and evidence actually state.
Graves often omits important sources and evidence.
Graves often mistreats in a biased or anachronistic way the sources he does use.
Graves occasionally relies on suspect sources.
Graves does little or no source analysis or formal textual criticism.
Graves' work is totally uninformed by modern social history (a field that did not begin to be formally pursued until after World War II, i.e., after Graves died).
Graves' conclusions and theories often far exceed what the evidence justifies, and he treats both speculations and sound theories as of equal value.
Graves often ignores important questions of chronology and the actual order of plausible historical influence, and completely disregards the methodological problems this creates.
Graves' work lacks all humility, which is unconscionable given the great uncertainties that surround the sketchy material he had to work with.
Graves' scholarship is obsolete, having been vastly improved upon by new methods, materials, discoveries, and textual criticism in the century since he worked. In fact, almost every historical work written before 1950 is regarded as outdated and untrustworthy by historians today.
All this is not to say Graves didn't have some things right. But you will never be able to tell what he has right from what he has wrong without totally redoing all his research and beyond, which makes him utterly useless to historians as a source. For example, almost all his sources on Krishna long postdate Christian-Nestorian influence on India. No pre-Christian texts on Krishna contain the details crucial to his case, apart from those few that were common among many gods everywhere. Can you tell from Graves which details are attested by early evidence, and which by late? That's a problem.

On the other side of the coin, consider his emphasis on the December 25 birth date as a common feature. This is one of the things he gets right, at least regarding Greco-Roman religion: all gods associated with the sun shared the sun's "birthday," erroneously identified as December 25 (it is actually the 21st). But for Jesus, we can actually trace when and why Jesus was assigned this birthday for political reasons in the 4th century, 300 years after Christianity began. Graves seems oblivious to the distinction between the origins of Christianity and its subsequent development. Yet no Christian in the beginning believed Jesus was born on December 25. But Graves obscures this fact, leading to false conclusions about the origins of the Christ story. So again, he gets some things right, but uses them in the wrong way. Can you tell when? That's a problem, too.