Pagan Parallels: Achilles Heel of Christianity

[stephan happy huller]

You can read this article for free. You can't go from owsyr to Lazarus. Alexander is the more likely suggestion.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/5 ... 3365329591

[stephan happy huller]

Again

http://books.google.com/books?id=vYIeAA ... ic&f=false

[stephan happy huller]

Again. They even have 'Osiris the god' in an Aramaic inscription.

http://books.google.com/books?id=mCQtAA ... ic&f=false

[stephan happy huller]

Again

http://books.google.com/books?id=WalLyn ... ic&f=false

[stephan happy huller]

Please tell me how you get from אוסירי ,וסירי or אוסרי to אלעזר.

[Tenorikuma]

Yeah, that kind of pseudo-linguistics usually hides a poor argument (and there's a reason you don't see real linguists making them). You don't have to go much farther than literary criticism to see that John's Lazarus story has nothing to do with Osiris, and everything to do with subverting the parable of Lazarus in Luke.

[stephan happy huller]

And the frustrating thing is that these arguments are believed by these people whether or not they make sense. There is no way to reason with them. You can show them how different each sound is in each word and it doesn't matter to them. They like Dorothy. She's a nice person. They like what the line of reasoning takes them and nothing is going to change their mind. And if you persist they attack you for 'lying' and 'ruining your reputation.' I can't think of any worse fate than accepting as holy truth arguments like this. Why is it even necessary? Why does Lazarus have to be Osiris?

[Tenorikuma]

I've noticed that people tend to fall for linguistic hoaxes and bad arguments of a very basic nature that they would not fall for in other domains. You've got all kinds of books peddling alternate origins of the English language or trying to link ancient Hebrew with Japanese (!), and it makes you wonder how such pseudoscience gets the attention it does. My guess as to the reason is that linguistics, aside from being complicated and abstract, is a field that students get no exposure to in primary school, high school or college (aside from very specific programs). Imagine the mistakes people would make about astronomy if no one ever told you the planets revolved around the sun unless you took special university courses.

I'm envious that JSTOR is working for you. All it gives me are "page not found" errors. JSTOR tech support said they have no idea why, even though it's affecting lots of people.

[GakuseiDon]

This is Gerald Massey, which I think is the source of Acharya S's comments on Lazarus == El Azar. "Ancient Egypt - The Light of the World"

• As to the name, the Egyptian name of the Greek Osiris is Hesar, or Asar. And when we take into consideration that some of the matter came from its Egyptian source through the Aramaic and Arabic languages (witness the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy) there is little difficulty, if any, in supposing that the Al (article the) has been adopted through the mediam of the Arabic, or derived from the Hebrew prenominal stem אל [**], to emphasize a thing, as in the Osiris, which passed into the article Al for "the" in Arabic, and was prefixed to the name of Osiris as Al-Asar, which, with the Greek "s" for suffix becomes L-azarus. The connecting link whereby Al-Asar was turned into Lazarus, the Osiris, was in all likelihood made in the Aramaic language, which had its root-relations with the Egyptian. Hieroglyphic papyri are among its monumental remains, as well as the insription of Carpentras.

[**] = Not sure if this is the correct representation of the Hebrew character. To see the one Massey used, check the link above.

[Tenorikuma]

It's well known that Luke's parable is a retelling of an Egyptian folk tale about Setme and Si-Osiris — a story of which there were probably Jewish variants as well. I don't see what help it is to create a new etymology for the Latinized name Eleazar. Luke's story did not have Lazarus rising from the dead, because he wasn't supposed to.