Is Christmas a Pagan Rip-Off? Interview with Louis Markos.

is christmas rooted in pagan ideas was the virgin birth of jesus copied from ancient greco-roman stories you have undoubtedly heard these claims and today that's we're going to talk about but before we jump in the reason this is so important to me is i grew up in a christian home many of you watching this will recognize my father as an influential apologist i heard the evidences for the faith growing up but in the 90s when i was in college i was surfing on the internet and came across the claim for the first time that christianity was borrowed from these ancient pagan mystery religions and jesus maybe didn't even exist and it rocked me now we're gonna unpack that today because i have with me a friend who's written a fascinating new book it's called the myth made fact his name is dr lou marcos and he teaches at houston baptist university which is a you might say a brother or sister school to biola have a wonderful apologetics program but he teaches in the humanities and although he works in the area of apologetics brings a real kind of english literature approach to this that i think is going to really help us unpack some of these ideas so lou really appreciate you being with us hey thanks for having me on sean it's great yeah my my pleasure so let's just jump in right away you've written this recent book it's called the myth made fact where you take 50 different ancient greco-roman stories and just tell them briefly some stories people have heard give lessons to it but i want to know before we jump into some of the particulars and specifically focus on some of the claims about christmas and christianity being borrowed from these pagan mystery religions why are you interested in greek mythology in the first place well i'll tell you sean i've got a double reason to love greek mythology first i am a man of the west a man of the great books of the western intellectual tradition and so the greek myths are part of my tradition as a westerner but i also happen to be a greek all four of my grandparents were born in greece they all came to america about 1930 my parents were born here i was born here and so these are also my stories because i am a greek american and so i grew up you know reading greek mythology as mother's milk and as i grew and became an english you know teacher english major english professor more and more i realized how essential these myths were they underlie so much of what we do about 12 years ago i published a book with intervarsity called from achilles to christ why christians should read the pagan classics and i focused on the iliad the odyssey the aeneid and the greek tragedies but in this book i wanted to go behind even the great epics and tragedies to the real raw material these are the original stories the er stories in which we see people wrestling in the raw with the big questions who am i what am i here what is my purpose how do i know my value what is my beginning what is my ending and so if you really want to get to the root then greek mythology is the place to look for what it means to be human that makes a lot of sense and we're going to look at some of these particular stories and see if the christian story is ripped off from these but you're also a cs lewis scholar and that's fascinating because you've studied myth and of course these ancient stories have myths so there's such a powerful crossover but one of the things that fascinated me as i was reading the introduction to your book is you talked about how what held lewis back originally from becoming a theist or a christian was his knowledge of mythology that it was these graco roman stories that prevented him from coming to faith but then eventually that shifted so tell me why and the story that drove that change in lewis this is a great story and there wouldn't be my book if it wasn't for this story now most of your listeners i'm sure they're aware that lewis was an atheist before he became a christian but most people think that he went directly from atheism to christianity which is the story of chuck colson lee strobel and your own father josh mcdowell right try to disprove the resurrection and believing it right that's not exactly lewis's story he didn't go directly to christianity first he became a theist a believer in god and he remained there about a year and a half but he couldn't quite cross over into believing that jesus is the son of god what was holding him back well one of the things holding it back is was lewis like myself an english professor who loved mythology and knew it inside and out he was also a fan of a book called the golden bow by sir james frazier now he's less known today but frasier is the joseph campbell of the 19th century someone who was a sort of cultural anthropologist or comparative mythologist he looked at the myths of all the ancient people and tried to combat i loved that stuff right joseph campbell wasn't a believer but i've learned so many just like i've learned a lot from young right one of the reasons jordan peterson though he's not a believer is so close to a lot of the things we're saying is because he was influenced by the archetypes of people like jung well the golden bow searches for archetypes what's an archetype it's a certain character type or story or theme that is recognizable across cultures uh most people will know that george lucas was reading joseph campbell and that helped make man that's why star wars has the type of of obi-wan kenobi that's the type of the old man the the wise old man that trains the youth right that's the type of of luke skywalker who's the foundling the the son of a prince who's raised as a carpenter only to realize who he is right there's darth vader the guy who sells his soul for forbidden wisdom and goes to the dark side right but james frazier in this book the golden bow identified something that today would be called the core king now what is the corn king first of all you need to realize that when a british person says so it's the wheat king although the wonderful novel uh children of the corn actually plays on the misunderstanding of that word the court this is kind of funny because the corn king is linked to the side of the week the seasonal cycle of life and death and rebirth and all across the ancient world there's a tale of a god or a demigod a hero who comes to earth who dies usually a violent death and then returns now it's not a literal resurrection it's more like a seasonal return again okay light death and rebirth right so if you're an egyptian your corn king is named osiris if you're a greek you call him adonis or bacchus if you're a babylonian you call him taboos if you're a persian you call him mithras if you're a norseman you call him bolder it's the same basic story across cultures that didn't know each other now for a long time lewis said well obviously jesus is just the hebrew version of the same corn king myth how can i believe it and that's what a lot of atheists are still pushing on their website to this day jesus is only a myth and nothing more and lewis was stuck there until one night when lewis was 32 32 years old he was having a long walk with his good friend j.r.r tolkien author of the lord of the rings very good catholic and they were walking around maudlin college there's this beautiful tree-lined walk called addison's walk and then there's a third person too as they walked around and around addison's walk late into the night they were discussing this very issue and that's when tolkien said to louis lewis did you ever think maybe the reason that jesus sounds like a myth is that he's the myth that became fact or the myth that became true as g.k chesterton said jesus is the true myth now what are we talking about here sean okay there is a difference between data and the interpretation of data let me explain with an easy answer okay if you went i went did you go to secular school sean or no i went to for high school but biola and grad school was in christian university okay but when you were a kid right so middle school you probably had a class in social studies because nobody teaches history and h in houston and in america anymore but you took a class in social studies you probably read the epic of gilgamesh like i did and if you read that you read this wonderful flood story very exciting and if you had the typical teacher she said now children we now know that every ancient culture has a global flood story and that just proves the bible's just a myth and i remember saying right wait a minute right there's another way to read that data if every single culture has a universal flood story maybe that means that there was an actual flood and whereas in all the other cultures it only retained a myth and value only amongst the jews didn't have a historical value another example the evolutionists always show us that picture it's called homology so the elbow of a man and the dorsal fin of a face and the wing of a battle they're all similar and they say proof of evolution i say proof of a common designer who doesn't keep reinventing the wheel okay so you need to understand that the data is what the data is but how do you interpret it now when i see the same story and let me say the same yearning the same desire in different cultures all around the world i say where does that universal desire come from jung would say it comes from the collective unconscious well where did the collective unconscious come from that's no answer that's like saying our dna was seeded by aliens well where did the alien dna come from okay so when i look at that i say look if the bible's true and god created all people right he put in all of us that same yearning as paul says in the area he set the times that we might reach after him and grope after him it makes sense that we all have that desire and so when god actually works out his salvation in human history doesn't it make sense sean that he would do it in a way that not only fulfills the old testament law and prophets but fulfills the highest yearnings of the pagans i i don't know if this ever bothered you but did it bother you when you were a kid are you saying that before jesus came god ignored 99 of humanity and only talk to the jews well absolutely i believe only to the jews did he speak directly what theologians call special revelation only to them is it the word of god but he didn't ignore the rest of us he spoke through what's called general revelation he spoke through creation he spoke through our conscience he spoke through our reason and to use the c.s lewis phrase he spoke through the good dreams of the pagans i love that i love that stories we see the yearning right but it's still general river it is seen through a glass darkly dimly as in a mirror and that's why most of those stories are actually kind of frightening they're often very bloody and all sorts of things yeah we see the authentic yearning okay sean i often teach my students that amongst the ancient greeks you can't really have an idea of sin why because the only way you can understand sin is if you have a holy god to measure it against right well they didn't have a holy god but all of those ancient people understood a word we still use today taboo there were certain taboo crimes that bring ritual impurity on the people the tribe the nation and most of these corn king stories linked to the seasonal cycle are also linked to the ritual need for a scapegoat to atone for sin all summed up in the oedipus story oedipus who did the two worst taboos incest and patricide and that whole story is a scapegoat story maybe you've read renee gerard on scapegoating it's a very popular book to he was a strong catholic but it's read by secular people as well we understand and we see it in politics today the need to find a scapegoat for our sins but we understand that so again this argument that's used against christianity that jesus is just a myth i say no i say that if jesus came into the world and his coming his incarnation his crucifixion his resurrection if all of those events were absolutely meaningless to the 99 of the gentile pagans of the world then it would look like we had been invaded by a foreign god but in fact the truth is that he is the savior of the world he is the true bacchus the true adonis the true osiris the true myth that came into the world and affected salvation i love it that's beautiful now let me let me finish out c.s lewis's story because he's on this walk with tolkien and then he suggests maybe god has planted this on the hearts of people throughout history so when it actually happens they would recognize it did that turn loose immediately did again look at the evidence why did he conclude that the christian myth so to speak was true and not any other myth it did and it was about a week later a week to ten days later he was driving to the zoo his brother was driving the motorcycle and he was in one of those old-fashioned side cars and lewis explains surprised by joy as a spiritual autobiography he explains that when i left for the zoo i did not believe that jesus christ was the son of god by the time i got there i believed it somehow it just suddenly snapped but it all began with that long conversation with tolkien which actually moved into their rooms later on went late into the night in lewis's rooms at muddling college and what lewis realized is that all those other stories are mythic they take place in nowhere land and you know what it doesn't even make a difference if they're true or not for the for the pagans it was the idea of the story that was important but lewis understood that there was something different about jesus it happened in a real time and a real place it's all in order he says under pontius pilate this really happened in time and space where everywhere else it's mythic it's legendary it doesn't even make a difference if it's literally true it's sort of the way more and more liberal theologians think about christianity it's only well no because either jesus rose from the dead or he didn't that was the issue that brought your father to faith like it's the resurrection this happened in real time in real space guys and everything's different from now on okay so for those just uh joining us we are moving towards talking about whether christianity is ripped off from these pagan mystery religions and we're going to talk about some since it's roughly christmas time about the virgin birth of christ etc but we're doing some background work to understand the connection between mythology and between christianity now when c.s lewis became a christian he said that we shouldn't throw out these myths and that we still need them why did he think these myths were still important i love it that the phrase louis uses and i think it's the the title of my my preface more than bolder not less and what does he mean by that it is very important to understand that jesus is more than boulder osiris adonis bacchus etc he's more because he actually is true it happened in historical time and space and our salvation was one so he's obviously more but he's not less than because jesus does save us in if you will the literal historical world but that does not stop jesus from speaking to the pagan inside of us i don't mean the the the guy that joins the college fraternity i mean that learns to be part of a story to be part of something that is even epic right and so we need to understand that jesus okay the garden of eden i believe it's a literal story there was a literal adam and eve but it is also a myth because a myth is a story that answers questions about origins or destinations about who we are it's a story that we participate in and we need to understand that jesus the incarnate and crucified and risen christ should not only speak to our mind and our logic it's not just evidence that demands a verdict right it also speaks to the imagination to the heart and remember when when people say the heart they ultimately mean the will and a lot of time what drives our will is not just our head it's our heart as well with if if all you have is the head it's not going to do anything you need the heart you need an engagement of the imagination you need to be part of a story here's an ironic thing a lot of people don't realize that a lot of the words that we as christian apologists use like anthropic principle those were actually invented by secular humanists to argue against it right but we've accepted because it's true everything in this finely tuned universe points towards us towards man okay in the same way a favorite word of christian apologies and a good word is meta-narrative but that was also invented by the post-modern secular humanist to say that there is no mechanism meta means like metaphysics above sure is the larger story to which all other stories fit now they called it the narrative but they don't believe that there isn't a narrative okay but we believe there is a minute there's a greater story of creation fall redemption reconciliation and glorification and we are part of that story christ affected that story and all other stories feed into that there are either intimations of it right there there are glimpses that point forward like what we're talking about or they're reflections of it like almost every marvel comic movie that we see on the screen nowadays those are all still replaying of the same story or for that matter lord of the rings or chronicles of narnia so that's great that's a question i want to ask i wore my marvel super hero which oh you should go ahead people who know me know that i wear one almost all the time anyways but i uh i did a post recently i've done a bunch of things with social media how infinity war and end game is about the question of the value of human life and what a hero really is and you have this idea that there's 14 million possibilities only one will lead to the saving of half of the universe and it's iron man willingly laying down his life as a sacrifice i saw it was like are you kidding me here's 10 years hundreds of millions of dollars if not more to make this and they climax with a christ type story now that doesn't prove christianity is true but what what does that tell us when you see it movies like this you see movies like avatar where you have jake sully taking on the flesh of the blue people dying for them you see it big hero 6 at the end this hero sacrifices his life for the boy like it's all over modern day stories not just these ancient greco-roma stories what does this tell us it tells us that that yearning and desire is hard wired into us and how can it be hardwired to all people around the globe unless it was put in there by the creator who created us all we realized you know even like a ultimately silly movie like independence day right who does not cheer when uh what's what's the actor's name yeah when he drives his uh uh spaceship right into the spaceship and blows it up and sacrifices himself right who doesn't chip because we understand how important uh greater love has no man this than he lays down his life for a friend we understand that story and that there is a need for a sacrifice right and we also learned something else i still can't believe it when i watched endgame the bad guy thanos is absolutely a modern secular humanist who would completely agree with paul ehrlich's book uh the population bomb who thinks people these are the extreme uh greenhouse people who think really they're not stewards of nature like we are they are people who think nature is good and man is bad and i suddenly realized the bad guy here are the secular liberals who want to kill half the population it's unbelievable that they did that did they realize they were doing that let me explain to you how powerful the true myths are okay remember the uh episode one two and three of star trek of star wars right episode three uh what was it called whatever return revenge of the sith was that was called uh the third one and okay in that george lucas was trying to be sort of very secular humanist and post-modern where he has this part where uh the the good guy says you're either where the bad guy says you're either for us or against us right right and they try to make us believe that the people who believe in absolute truth and absolute ideas are the bad guys but later on we discovered that it's the evil emperor who says well truth is a slippery concept what i'm getting at is even when george lucas tries to go sort of liberal he can't do it because the true myth will not allow him to do that it is the good guys who believe in absolute goodness truth and beauty and it's the bad guys who are complete relativist and think there is no truth so you almost can't they keep trying to make post-modern fables but somehow it doesn't work even even even shrek ends up having redemptive ideas it tries to try to deconstruct every single myth that we hold sacred but it can't help itself but fall into this story that is hard wired into us and that we are part of sean i say something go ahead good there's something that i bring up a lot it's a little bit of a tangent but it's very important okay now now again i i'm sorry but if you don't believe in a literal adam and eve i think there's a problem with you okay but i do accept that a real bible-believing christian who believes the bible is the word of god could interpret genesis 1 more figuratively to be longer days okay and i want to say so because it's very important okay whether you believe our earth is 6 000 years old or 6 million or 6 billion okay the fact is that when you read the bible god's redemptive plan in human history although we need to understand creation and fall we need to understand the flood we need to understand babel when we look at the bible and look at the actual redemptive plan that god is doing in human history it really begins with abraham right i don't know when exactly the flood happened but abraham is only 4 000 years ago he's about 2000 bc sure so you need to understand that the very narrow specific work that god is doing in human history is 4 000 years old with jesus exactly at the center if sean you live to the age of 80 your lifespan will make up 2 of that 4 000 years that is pretty darn significant right even if you die at 40 it'll make up one percent you and i have made it past that if it would still make up one percent of that okay i just wanna i just because so many christians think interesting if you know if the earth is 6 billion years old then my life is meaningless no it's not you we are very much a part i mean even in terms of days we are part of the work that god is doing in human history we're part of that jesus is the hinge of history these nonsense people that use bce and ce look jesus is the hinge of history okay before and after he is the hinge of history and everything changes after that and there are stories one of them told by plutarch who was not a believer that about the time that christ came all of the oracles and sybils stopped prophesying and pan the god of the woods ran off and disappeared it was almost and milton wrote a poem partly about this that everything changed when the myth became fact and i love this this is what convinced lewis that it's not myth in the sense of an invented story but a beautiful story that explains reality and we see it in ancient greek roman stories we see it today in the marvel movies and yet the argument is that we saw it uniquely happen in history because god has placed this on our hearts now when i tagged you on twitter today about this discussion instantly an atheist posted this link that showed these similarities to mithras and osiris as if these similarities themselves just prove that christianity borrowed these pagan myths now before we specifically respond to that one of the claims is that when we see for example early christian art the early christian art is imitating certain pagan symbols so for example you even mention in your book that the fifth century church santa maria maggiore and i apologize if i did not say that correctly the baby jesus sits on a throne and is flanked by an entourage of angels as if he were a roman emperor surrounded by his court so what is going on here because the assumption is that the christians just borrowed these pagan ideas but you're saying if we actually get into the literature that time that is not what the christians were doing let's step back here and say something because i'm sure i'm speaking to a lot of my fellow evangelicals conservative thinkers good bible thinkers we need to stop saying the bible is only the word of god in the original greek and hebrew okay that's muslims who say that okay muslims only consider the quran the quran in classical arabic and they don't accept that's why all those indonesians are still saying their prayers in arabic they have no idea what they're saying okay and there's more muslims in indonesia than all the arabs put together right right i mean no i mean yes if you can learn greek and hebrew that's a wonderful thing to do okay but look first of all the new testament was written in greek but jesus preached in aramaic so when you're reading the words of jesus in greek there's already a translation and guess what that is okay our religion is an incarnational religion our religion we worship an incarnational god that's why i love people like the wycliffe bible translators or the jesus film project who are trying to take the the story the gospel and incarnate it in other languages and other cultures that is what we're about that is not watering down doctrine that is taking the truth and rebirthing it in that culture so they can understand can you imagine going to the eskimos and saying jesus is the lamb of god when they have no idea where the land is that's a great example i mean we need to find what don richardson of the peace child called redemptive analogies we need to find because look if god really is the creator of the universe and jesus is really the savior of the world then we're going to need to find in every culture some kind of seed pointing to christ if we don't find it that's a problem again if jesus didn't sound like any of the myths that would be a problem lewis says right the fact that he fulfills their greatest yearnings and desires captured and embodied in their midst gives further proof that jesus is the savior of the world and so what what they were doing they weren't watering down the faith and you know good evangelicals were oh there go those catholics again watering down the thing no no that's not what they're doing they are trying to take the true gospel and incarnated in that culture trying to find bridges that we can reach out now they didn't it wasn't anything goes notice they didn't use the name zeus to refer to jesus name is already too corrupted but they used the words logos or lagos and theos those were greek philosophy words but they used them because those words could be redeemed and used i'll give you something that actually comes from uh eternity in their hearts by don richardson he distinguishes between the sodom effect and the melchizedek effect okay what do you mean by that okay you remember that that but before the decree the destruction of sodom and gomorrah there was a war where abraham had to go in and rescue his nephew lop right and after it was over and he just and he could defeated the the many tribes of sodom and gomorrah they came to him and tried to offer him things right and abraham rejected it i will not take anything from these bad pagans of whom there is nothing to redeem but then this shadowy figure called melchizedek appears out of nowhere a man of no origin a king of peace from jerusalem and what does abraham do he offers him 10 he offers him bread and wine because in melchizedek and melchizedek says that he worships el elyon god on high that's not a hebrew name for god but abraham adopts it and accepts it and apparently some of the missionaries that went to china and korea had more success because they took the chinese name for god that meant god of the heavens and used it now they didn't take some pagan name they didn't call jesus the incarnation of buddha god forbid that would be sure sure but they found a an older name for god that that that touched on the reality that hadn't been corrupted yet and they could make that connection that's what they're doing they're showing that look i believe jesus did this himself in john chapter 12 this is jesus's last public discourse and it's during the passover and there are a group of greeks who have come to the passover to meet jesus and they go to philip the disciple philip who by the way is the greek king and says we would like to see jesus and philip goes to jesus says there are some greeks who want to meet you and jesus's answer is the time has come for the son of man to be glorified and then he says except a grain of wheat of corn be die and and be buried it will remain a single seed but if it's buried it will it will produce much fruit now if you look through the whole old testament that metaphor that analogy is not a jewish one they talk about sowing the seed but the idea that the seed must die and be reborn is not a jewish metaphor but it is a greek metaphor now we don't know exactly who these greeks are but the fact that they're interested in hebrew rituals and cultic practices suggests to me that they might have been members of the elusivian mysteries the most ancient cult in the greco-roman world that worshipped well they worshipped persephone the one who dies and is reborn each year for which the seasons come according to the greeks they also worship bacchus the grape they on their temple was a ripe ear of corn or wheat and they clearly worshipped the cycle the seasonal cycle of life death and rebirth now if these greeks were part of that mystery then it's as if jesus is reaching out a hand and saying all these years you have worshipped the seed that dies and is reborn wow i am that seed come and finish your journey christ over culture i like to say christianity is not the only truth but it is the only complete truth if we say christianity is the only truth we're throwing everything out we're dropping a wall but no in every culture in every religion there are bits and pieces of truth but only in christianity only in christ himself does truth reach its full and complete form and that's what they're doing in that early church they're reaching out a hand and saying come we will show you the true saturnalia the true soul invictus the true unconquerable son the real bacchus who doesn't the real bacchus is unbelievably violent and destructive and vindictive but there's a seed of truth that finds its fulfillment in christ that's that's beautiful tell me if this fits and if it doesn't feel free to say mcdowell you missed it but i was i was at a church it's been a few years we were visiting this church and to start off the first worship song they played was the 80s song by cindy lauper time after time oh i remember that yeah and it's a beautiful song and it's kind of like basically whenever you turn around and come back i'll be there for you and they were singing this song as if it's about a human relationship but saying actually there's a god that is here for you in this way what you think is experienced on a human level there's actually a divine element to it so it's almost like they were taking a secular song and infusing it with a deeper purpose about god as a whole in our relationship with us is that a kind of modern day example of how we do the same thing we all we all have a god-shaped vacuum and let's reach out and fight we're about the same age i think you remember that song you light up my life debbie boone i think her name was debbie boot now i think she was a christian i think in her head she was actually singing to jesus but it was a romantic song and i remember there was all sorts of talk about that when i was growing up right whether that was okay or not and again we can reduce it we can reduce it to basically you know uh boy bands singing about their girlfriend jesus my girlfriend i mean it can be bastardized yes but yes again there's an old la i can't remember the exact latin but both lewis and tolkien quoted the latin phrase means the misuse of something does not cancel out the proper use of it okay if it did then we better stop reading the bible since almost every uh uh heresy and cult came out of a misreading of scripture i said so we better be careful okay we've got not to throw out the baby with the bath water again we need to find what it is that people are desiring when they go to a marvel movie and try to take them by the hand and direct them to say look it's good i remember re i can't remember who wrote this apologetics book but he said what young people are looking for is not so much a preacher they're looking for a gandalf figure who will lead them along the way that's what they're looking for well hey we've got the true gandalf and the true dumbledore uh we we've got the real one here who will lead you the rest of the journey my metaphor is that the mythology and even these these songs are like candles jesus is the sun right and let's leave them from the candle to the sun but once we get to the sun we don't need to turn around and and and excoriate the candle and scream at it let's be thankful that that candle gave us a little bit of a light that led us to the fuller light that's kind of what we're talking about here this is great and really helpful by the way in the comments some people are anticipating the challenges that will come like is this a deceptive way to sneak pagan practices into the church what about christmas trees december 25th we're gonna get to some of those particulars but i have a couple questions for you first what what story in your in your book again i'm referring to your book the myth made fact and you have 50 of these ancient greco-roman stories and then you gave kind of commentary about how to think and interact with them as christians which of these stories if any most mirrors the christian story as a whole of a god coming down being a teacher dying and resurrected which of the stories you think if you had to pick one out has at least the most similarities with christianity i think one of them and everybody's favorite hero to this day is hercules right and hercules is the son of zeus right now the story they made up for the disney hercules is not true to the myth but i i'm not mad at disney you do you wonder would you want kids to know that it's uh you know zeus basically raping a mortal woman i mean come on and i thought they came up with a really good idea and actually they increased the whole incarnational aspect of it you know where he loses his power becomes a human child so i think he actually made it even more christian than perhaps it wasn't but okay again hercules is the son of zeus right and he is a demigod right and he actually dies and resurrects he what happened was his own lust did him in and he ends up putting on a shirt that consumes his flesh and he finally only can do to stop the burning is throw himself into a fire and he burns apart and dies but then the gods take him up to mount olympus there is a death and resurrection also i love hercules because one of my favorite stories that's lesser known because it really appears in xenophon is the story of hercules at the crossroads and i tell the story in my book when he was still a young man he came to a place where three roads come together and there at the crossroads the young hercules the young hero in training was met by two women one woman in white and a woman in red and the woman in white went up to him and said hercules follow me and i will show you the path of virtue it will not always be an easy path there will be suffering but if you persevere you shall be a true hero of virtue you shall change the world and then the scarlet woman said don't listen to her follow me and your life will be easy you will have all that your lust desire there's no reason to suffer this is what we today see as the angel of the devil on our shoulder right it's the ultimate thing and in the end hercules takes up his club and clubs the scarlet woman okay now what i love about this this is jesus at the garden of gethsemane the true son of god at a crossroads knowing he needs to do something but not wanting to lord if any way father that this cup can pass let it pass and he was terribly tempted and he was in such act he sweated blood right and and by the way the beginning and ending of jesus's ministry is the same thing it is satan giving him the three temptations in the wilderness and it is i'm not sure if it was actually satan there but it is at least jesus struggling with what he knows he needs to do but it doesn't want to do because he was a full human as well as a fully god right and in the end he chose the harder way and sacrificed himself so there is a lot of parallels between these two but again all of those heroes hercules perseus jason uh who's the other one theseus they're all flawed heroes samson for that matter samuel yeah he even dies by suicide so to speak uh and and what does he do samson kills more people in his death than he did in his life and you know what jesus saved more people in his death than he did in his life isn't that wonderful so a flawed hero like samson can also be a archetype that points the way to jesus now virgin births okay not really usually it's more of a divine rape but there is one story that comes closest to that and it's the story of perseus okay this deny the mother dana or deny she was locked up in a tower and zeus came to her as a shower of gold right this is not like when he comes as a swan and rapes leader to give birth to helen of troy or comes as a as a bull as he does to europa and gives birth to king minos this they never explained the uh biology of it okay shower of gold doesn't exactly seem like normal sexual relationships it's it's much closer to a virgin birth and perseus is the one who killed medusa the one whose look turns you to stone right interesting and it is perseus who is gifted by the gods with all these gifts and saves us from the gorgon it's like one of the harry potter movies where the basilisk who also turns you to stone with his eyes a perfect satan figure right is he's blinded by who by the griffin i'm sorry by the phoenix the one who dies and is reborn the ultimate christ figure of all mythical beasts right so uh you know a lot of people were really angry about the harry potter books but i believe that jk rowling is coming out of a christian tradition she's probably very very liberal that's right she is coming out of a christian tradition clearly and she is working out a medieval allegory in which the the tears of the phoenix you know bring healing and destroy the bacillus so i mean all of those myths are there we understand the nature of good and evil and the nature of goodness to give all that it has even to the point of sacrifice but that sacrifice releases a great energy that is salvific okay so let's talk about briefly before we myth move i want to talk about the december 25th claim but even this story with perseus and this kind of shower of gold that's not explained how is that story different from the biblical story of the virgin birth where do they part ways and what ways is the christian story unique ultimately in all of these stories with zeus even if it's a shower of gold it's ultimately a divine rape okay that's ultimately what it is okay okay we might call it a seduction we might call but it is ultimately a kind of a rape right and that's the complete opposite with with god right where there is no divine rape and in fact mary is given a choice it seems pretty darn clear to me mary could have said no yeah what she said is behold the handmaiden of the lord be it to me as you have said and she was willing mary is the first person mary's the first christian in history who allowed jesus to be born through her into the world because that's the job of all of us right we're mirrors of christ and we want christ to be born through us into the world whether we're men or women okay so the differences and of course the other difference is that it's historical it actually happened right but it's not a divine rape it is a once in a lifetime thing and you know there are a lot of okay i teach at houston baptist university and in our statement of faith which is about 50 years old they go out of their way to say we believe in the virgin birth but they never mentioned the incarnation anywhere now of course we believe in interesting but we should understand that there is a religion that does believe in the virgin birth but completely rejects the incarnation you know what that religion is called sean that religion is called islam okay because oh okay that's right in the virgin birth but muhammad absolutely rejects and excoriates the idea that jesus was god incarnate okay now of course we're not muslims over at hbu but the reason we put so much emphasis on the virgin birth is because if you remember back in the 60s a lot of even baptists were saying oh we're christians but we don't believe in the virgin birth as if god can mess around with anything but sex i mean it's really a weird thing you know i mean all he did i mean the creation of adam right it was done directly by god god can do it direct but people seem embarrassed by that and people still say the most absurd argument of all time is the idea that the only reason the early church believed in the virgin birth is that they didn't understand modern science and didn't have a sex ed class to tell sure sure this is absolutely ludicrous okay yes nobody in the ancient world knew about the egg it's microscopic they only sort of knew about the sperm they were really seeing semen uh and they and then the word sperm means seed they use the analogy of planting the seed in the earth and then it gives myself okay they didn't understand embryology but they did understand that a woman does not get pregnant unless he has sex with a man okay right and that's why joseph was about to put aside his wife okay joseph knew where babies come from so let's get away from this nonsense that the only reason they advocated the virgin birth is that they didn't understand the laws of nature guess what you can't even call something a miracle unless you understand the laws of nature if you're ignorable it's like fairyland anything can happen but just because we understand that a woman only gives birth if he lies with a man do we recognize that the virgin birth is a miracle and again in some ways every time there's a divine coupling between zeus and the mortal woman it points towards the virgin birth but instead of it being a divine rape by a callous and uncaring god read the poem leta and the swan by william butler yates to see the callousness of zeus in raping leda but uh again that's not what's happening here this is the kid father making a new atom that that's that's really helpful distinction because one of the things that amazes me when you read the gospel story you know in matthew 2 and luke 2 is the absence of any sexual connotation in the virgin birth it's gone she's just filled with the holy spirit because god is gonna come through her in the person of jesus and be born and yet you're saying in all of these ancient stories there's at least some sexual connotation if not rape that's a massive difference between the two amongst others and and and you know in fact leta and the swan where helen of troy came from this is a bird raping the woman isn't it wonderful that the holy spirit came in the form of a dove right and you know usually the way we depict in all the art of the enunciation the dove comes in so we got we got a bird but this is a divine bird okay not a a human divine bird that's raping right um so again the story and the same way there is no such thing you know as the bodily resurrection of jesus is a new thing i mean there's intimations of it in hercules being taken up to olympus and things like that but there's nothing like that and there's certainly nothing like the once for all sacrifice because the pagans kept doing it over and over again uh they would weep over and over again it was about the the seasonal death and rebirth it wasn't about a once for all death and resurrection and all everything is different after this moment so they're they really they're similar in terms of yearning but they couldn't be more different in the actual historical details and of what they mean that's great let's talk about the uh the birth of jesus on december 25th i can't tell you how many times skeptics will say to me we know he wasn't even born then and there was the soul invictus or the birth of mithras on december 25th and those facts alone in the minds of some people imply that therefore the birth of jesus was a myth yeah how should we interpret this it just doesn't follow okay under constantine and then his successors slowly the roman empire is becoming christian how do you build a bridge how do you reach out to these pagan peoples again they do not tell them that jesus is the son of zeus or jupiter right already around the winter solstice the first day of winter now to us the first day of winter is december 21st back then it was december 25th okay so it is the winter solstice the shortest day of the year and that's why that is the day of soul invictus that's latin for the unconquerable sun that's the birthday of the sun because the shortest day of the year it's like the sun is shriveling up and then it's reborn right after the winter solstice the day start getting longer and longer until they reach the the uh the vertical equinox when they're the the same and then you get to the autumnal leak when the the the summer equinox when it's the longest day and that's the cycle okay we don't have much of that cycle in houston where i'm talking to you from but they have another place and and probably not in biola either but anyway we've heard about the seasons sean we've heard about that we've heard about this stuff called snow right that god has dandruff you know we've heard about that but it's a weird concept but anyway so the um during that time they're already worshiping that they're looking to it but there's something else that happened they are worshipping something called the saturnalia in virgils in the in book eight they talk about this belief okay saturn is known in greek as kronos and he is the king of the titans right and the titans were overthrown by the olympian gods led by zeus or jupiter but the romans said that during the great war between the olympians and the titans the titans ran to italy and were hidden away as a friend of mine said the first witness protection program the the the uh type the titan gods under saturn went to italy and that's where they were they were latent and according to virgil that's why the original name of idioli is laciem because the gods were hidden and during that period when saturn ruled italy it was the golden age when god and man were close man in nature everything was wonderful but eventually that golden age gave way to the silver and the bronze and the iron age and it was lost but during the time of jesus the roman republic and the roman empire every year during that that same time around the time of soul invictus they worshipped the saturnalia it was sort of a topsy-turvy mardi gras kind of festival where everything was turned in the rich would dress as poor and poor would dread people would cross-dress not because they were trans and nothing to do with that because it's a time of topsy-turvy it's a return to innocence to a childlike wonder well these two celebrations kind of come together at that time and what better time to celebrate the true birth of the son of god the true saturnalia the return and you know sean i understand why they do it but i don't like when you go to a good baptist church and you have a christmas celebration they've always got to spend time talking about the crucifixion okay now the crucifixion's important okay we need it for our salvation but let's just stop and understand that christmas let's enjoy it for what it is it is a momentary return of instance it's like eden is reborn with mary's the new eve jesus is the new adam everything is reborn and let's and the the pagans understood that the need for a return to innocence and so i think that constantine and the early church were right let's put it at that time they're already celebrating and there now i just should say just in fairness that there are some christian scholars who have made the argument that december 25th was actually an old church calendar i'm not sure if i'd buy this but let me just explain it because i think it's important okay now most people would say they chose december 25th as the as christmas and then they just worked nine months backward to march 25th which is the annunciation okay but there are some christian theologians that have argued with some evidence that actually march 25th for the annunciation is an ancient date because a lot of times there was the belief that a saint his birthday and his death day were the same day so maybe jesus was born and we don't say birth there but we say the incarnation because that's the real beginning it might make sense that the incarnation would be at the same the enunciation would be at the same time as jesus's death and there's been a few years where where good friday fell on march 25th we're good friday it happened just a few years ago okay good friday and enunciation and it happened back in the 17th century because john dunn wrote a great poem about the annunciation and good friday falling on the same day so if they're right about that then they originally chose march 25th through the annunciation and by the way you know what else happened on march 25th sean the destruction of border happened on march 25th okay that's purposely you know the very catholic token interesting that on the same very interesting so it's march 25th even though that makes no sense really in terms of calendars whatever but it's march 25th um so that's fascinating if that's true then some people are arguing they just counted nine months ahead against december okay but i i'm skeptical i mean if december 22 it does get cold it does get cold in the middle east too and i just don't imagine the shepherds out on the hill on december 25th um but yeah that's that's an argument that i've i've heard a number of scholars making that if the shepherds are out in the field this wasn't happening in december probably in spring when he was born bottom line is we don't know exactly when he was he was born but there's no reason to think that they were copying these pagan traditions right just because it was on that day now let me ask you here's a great question uh by the way from stealth797 i'm gonna throw it up on the screen here and he says uh i guess the big question is where do we draw the line when it comes to integrating pagan traditions into christianity right we have to use our discernment we need to use the bible we have got to be careful i mean the best example of this is people even today that want to say jesus was someone who achieved buddha consciousness okay okay these are people that want to do away with the incarnation jesus is not fully god and fully man he is the son of god but only in the sense that all of us can become the son of god through meditation and all that sort of stuff right uh you probably know this that if you ask a jew or a muslim was jesus the son of god they will say god has no son because god is absolutely transcendent and they might even kill you okay that's right but if you ask a hindu or a buddhist or a new ager was jesus the son of god they'll say well yeah i believe jesus was the son of god but so was buddha so was gandhi so were all of us if we only know right so again we have to draw the line there jesus is okay jew with the exception of the modern day muslims jews are the most radical monotheists of all time right so you know jesus was either the son of god or the worst blasphemer of all time we can't play this game and turn jesus into someone with the buddha consciousness right either he was the worst blasphemer who ever lived right sure a lot of people don't know by the way a lot of people don't know sean that jesus didn't use the phrase liar lunatic or lord your dad did that because he's a good american and knows how to get out of lewis did certainly lewis did and others even before lewis the concept of calling it light lewis but it's the same argument and it goes back to chesterton and others as well but but but again we have to be careful that we we don't use uh you know maybe a good way to put it is that ins in like catholicism we get christianity with a few other things that will make links to the pagans but in islam we get christianity minus the incarnation minus the trinity minus the atonement and ultimately minus the resurrection in other words minus everything that is unique about christian theology so if what we're doing is watering down christian theology until it no longer has the distinction of trinity incarnation atonement and resurrection then we're watering down the gospel but if we're finding a bridge that will present those things the incarnation the trinity as the ultimate fulfillment of pagan yearnings then i think we're on the right track that's fair that makes a lot of sense let me ask you if you you would put it put it this way uh there's a few comments on the side about uh like christmas trees and are they pagan and should christmas christians use christmas trees i read an article on live science and i don't know for sure if live science got this right but i'd assume they're a pretty reliable source they said it clearly derives from the pagan practice of bringing greenery indoors to decorate in midwinter now for me even if i know that it's not going to bother me to practice that as a christian because we teach our kids and our family what christianity is about we're filtering all of these cultural practices through the lens of what the gospel is so as long as i'm aware of it and don't tell my kids hey christmas is a pagan holiday teach them what it is with discernment then it wouldn't bother me any more than having non-christian music or example or movies but watching them with discernment and care is that how you think about it or would you add or take anything away have you noticed sean there's something about christmas that just hallows things i mean even the most secular christmas song can still draw you into the spirit of christmas it's amazing right i mean it it's you know half of the secular songs were written by a guy named johnny marks who was who was jewish secular jewish right and he's the one that did all the rudolph the red-nosed reader all those songs tied to the to the rudolph thing and yet there's a magic to those songs because they're all pointing towards the greatest what jesus what csu is called the grand miracle the incarnation so yes i think it's right that the christmas tree ultimately comes from the german side it was brought in by you know victoria and albert uh queen victoria albert was from germany and it may even go back to the druids the idea of the yule log is a very druid idea as well but it's it's okay right some some people even say that easter the name easter comes from istr which is istra or isis right but it's okay as long as we understand that these pagan yearnings found their true historical fulfillment in the actual incarnate christ who died and rose again you know i look sean i understand theoretically that if you teach your kids about santa claus when they get older and realize there's no santa claus then they'll say you must have lied to me about jesus too i understand that's theoretically possible i've never met anybody that that happened to maybe you have i mean you know it's it's first of all if we're teaching about santa claus the spirit of giving right and we're thinking about the magi who gave gifts we're thinking about god who gave the gift of his son uh if we think about the historical saint nicholas who in one story gave all of his money to these girls to pay their dowry so they could become nuns and not be uh married off to people that to pagans they didn't want to marry i mean there there are you know even in santa claus there is a background that is very powerfully christian and so i don't think we need to be afraid of it we need to be more afraid that we as christians are giving in to the materialism of christmas okay that's a fair concern we're guilty we're not guilty of giving in to the good pagan is it more more guilty giving it to the modern uh you know it's almost like it's our our american duty to spend more money than we have uh on black friday to save the economy and shower our kids with things they don't need or something i mean let's look for where the real trap is the real trap is in modern materialism not in the pagan elements that are there that's fair i appreciate that if you don't mind let me ask you this last question came from uh uh stealth 797. he's asking the question right and i'll give you a chance to kind of sum up what your response might be here and then we'll respect your time and wrap up but he asks it he says so as long as christian theology isn't watered down it's okay to integrate pagan tradition okay it's you know what a better way to talk about this is okay let's say you grew up in a muslim jewish hindu buddhist home and then you become a christian right i don't think you have to throw away absolutely everything of your cultural baggage that you grew up with okay i think there are some things in your culture that have something of the divine to it may have even been that that led you to christ i don't think we have to throw that away i think we can reach on and latch on to the good stuff of our culture that again can be taken up in to christ right um that's great like i said you just if you're a chinese and become a christian the remembrance of the ancestors i think that's a very christian thing first of all because uh under thy father and mother is the first uh commandment that comes with a promise right i don't think we have to throw that away but we need to remember we do have a touchstone a measuring rod we do have scripture to tell us when we've gone too far and water down the faith but if we're taking something in our culture that's meaningful and that speaks to our desire for the god who became flesh then i think it's okay right we can have our imagination baptized to use the c.s lewis phrase i love that that's awesome i i've got one more question for you about your books some people are asking what's in your book uh what's it about how can they use it so i want to come back to that but want to remind everybody first if you are new to the channel make sure you hit subscribe because we have some other interviews coming up with people like jp moreland will be doing a behind the scenes interview on the people that have shaped his life the experiences the struggles that he's had we have michael behe coming on soon to talk about intelligent design and i have a christian and a mormon who will come on and we'll be discussing very soon what do mormons really believe about jesus in the afterlife and the scriptures so make sure you hit subscribe because this is brought to you by biola apologetics uh last question people are asking dr marcos about your book which we've been taught the myth made fact and this isn't focused just on christmas tell people who are interested in getting it what they could expect if they pick up your book okay in this book i retell 50 myths and they're broken into all different categories but for everyone first i retell the myth in my own words as if i'm a storyteller because you can't just go on wikipedia these are stories that need to be read out like read them out loud to your kids read them out loud to yourself then i follow with a thorough sort of interpretation of the meaning of the myth and the christian meaning of the myth then i offer a whole bunch of study questions but these are not simple yes no questions these are questions that are going to take you deep into these stories and get you to wrestle with them so that i hope a lot of people will read this book devotionally one chapter morning night time read it emotionally then i have all sorts of notes linking into scripture verses and you know filling in historical background now who's who's this book is for first of all it's definitely for classical christian schools and homeschoolers but it's also for sunday school classes where you have a book you want to discuss it you read it together all i've got enough study questions for anybody from a child all the way to a you know a professor uh anybody that you know a a like a book study group just a regular book study group it's a one-shop thing so it's a it's a book but it's also a textbook that teachers can use and classical academic press pulled out all the stop shots they spent a lot of money on this to make a video with color photos of the side and heart yeah and it's just it's beautiful in fact my original version of the book was only 60 000 words they said we want twice as much wow publishers never tell you that right they wanted me to get all the study questions and all the bible verses and all of that stuff and the the way i did it how did i double my book i thought back to all the interviews i've done in speeches i've given like this and i thought about the q and a sessions at the end of my speeches and i kind of on that i put all the kinds of questions that i remember people helping asking and how you can interact and all right so this is something for any age really from little kids all the way up to adults uh and it can be read to them or they can read it and it's a way of bringing them back into the myths bringing them back into the story to help us understand what it means to be part of god's story lou i love it there's two big compliments i want to give you because you remind me of my dad number one you just got enthusiasm and energy which i love and second you dress sharp my dad doesn't wear a bow tie but unique and different a whole bunch of comments are like man we just love the way this guy dresses and they weren't talking about me they were talking about you so thanks so much uh for coming on really appreciate it last thing i'll say while you're with us this channel is actually sponsored by biola apologetics if you have ever thought about coming and getting a graduate's green apologetics and i know you guys do this at houston baptist center paul jess program lou but we just are starting this semester fully entirely online so we used to have students come out for a weekend or for a couple weeks now you can do 100 online if you have an undergraduate degree you want to study the resurrection problem of evil reliability scriptures cultural apologetics there's information below or if you thought i'm not ready for masters but like a certificate program we have videos and exercises we'll send you and just kind of walk you through a formal study of apologetics there's a big time discount uh below so thanks everybody for joining us don't forget to hit the subscription and the notification bell dr marcos don't take off yet but to the rest of you uh thanks for great questions and a wonderful interaction looking forward to seeing everybody soon in our next live stream so thanks for joining us merry christmas to everyone

Channel: Dr. Sean McDowell

Views: 4,364

Rating: 4.9212599 out of 5

Keywords: Christianity, Faith, Jesus, Christmas, pagan, solstice, paganism, tree, ritual, influence, affect, mythological

Id: VEu7EYpBlak

Length: 68min 30sec (4110 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020