Jesus discussion

[Thiudareiks Flavius]

Thad,
You are correct that these dualistic trends influenced Judaism in the post exile period, where the Jews had been exposed to Zoroastrian theology for a very long time, and I said as much in a previous post. But mainstream Judaism dismissed these blasphemous ideas later, along with the bulk of apocryphal writings, which curiously, were embraced by some early Christian sects and can still be seen in Catholic Bibles.

Yes, because those early Christian sects arose out of branches of Second Temple Intertestamental Judaism that hadn't dismissed this (semi) dualist theology.

However, in the Christian book of Revelation we see an almost word for word plagiarism of Zoroastrian texts written hundreds of years earlier.

Because Revelations was the heir of the Jewish apocalyptic tradition which had been heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism centuries earlier.

Quite literally, in some cases, only the new names of Michael and Satan replace Ahura and Ahriman. In other places we see only slightly more subtle changes. For example, in the Zoroastrian mythos "dragons" will destroy one third of the human population. In the Revelation version the exact same one third of the human population are destroyed, but this time by fire breathing "horses" with sharp teeth like lions, and tails like serpents....hmmmmm. :oops:

And Jewish apocalyptic literature often depicts visions of 'dragons' and other terrifying beasts bring afflicting and/or divine judgement on a proportion of the population in the End Days. This isn't Christian 'plagarism' of Zoroastrian ideas, it's a Christian extention of a long established Jewish religious literature.

Of course, we can hardly blame Jesus for "stuff" written by others after his departure from this world.

Except the gospels have Jesus making apocalyptic statements and describing the End Days in very similar language to Revelations. Whether he actually did say these things is unclear, but there's little doubt that he was part of the Jewish apocalyptic tradition of his time.

The amazing thing is why, when so many early Christian writings were dismissed, this one remained "canon" despite how closely it imitated Zoroastrian mythology, and clearly contradicted the Old Testament scriptures Jesus endorsed.

I can't see how this is so remarkable. Christianity arose out of an apocalyptic branch of Judaism and remained highly apocalyptic in its outlook long after it separated from Judaism. It remains so to this day, as the success of those horrible Left Behind novels in the US indicates.