For example, he asserts those three gods were all virgin born: Horus was not born of a virgin. Plutarch relates the necessity for Isis to fashion Osiris a phallus before she descends on his body and receives 'the seed of Osiris in her womb.' (Who needs "Fifty Shades of Grey" or pre-teen vampire franchises when you could just read all that saucy Egyptian stuff.) As Yamauchi, Clauss and others show, Mithras is depicted explicitly emerging fully grown from a rock in ancient Roman depictions (curiously reminiscent of 60's British rock album artwork), and we even have a Latin inscription which spells out the rock birth for us. (Maybe it was one of those virgin rocks.) As for Krishna, before he was born his parents were imprisoned by his evil uncle Kamsa in an attempt by Kamsa to circumvent a prophecy about Krishna being born and killing him. As a tyrant of decorum, instead of killing his sister Devaki, he murders her first seven children in front of her and her husband as they are born in the prison. Krishna only survives his birth due to divine assistance. He was her eighth child as the prophecy itself stated. You can examine a refutation of the rest of Ray's claims about these gods here.
Perhaps Hagin's most famous claim is that a letter correspondence attributed to Emperor Hadrian links the early Christians with Egyptian Serapis worship. In my second post on Hagins, I pointed out the "Serapis letter" is a late forgery. The forged nature of the document is taken as axiomatic among scholars of the "Historia Augusta" from which it derives.
In this third post we will be examining Hagins' wacko claims about Arius at the council of Nicaea, and I will propose a challenge to Hagins. He's billed himself as an authority to the public so I will address him publicly and email this page to him.
Take a deep breath dear Remythologized reader, for I am about to present you the holy grail of Nicaeamyths. All the hundreds before that made you laugh and cry were but mere omens of this crowning achievement of historical negligence. Blood will shoot out of your eyeballs. Catatonic visions of Dan Brown rotating his head 360 degrees will seize you. You will wake up in the fetal position in a puddle of drool with your fingernails embedded in a J. N. D. Kelly textbook. Brace yourself:
HAGINS CLAIMS ARIUS CONTENTION AT NICAEA WAS OVER JESUS HISTORICAL EXISTENCE. THATS RIGHT. HE SAYS JESUS WAS UNKNOWN PRIOR TO THE CENTURIES LEADING UP TO NICAEA.
At 30:28 into this "lecture" Hagins says, "Nobody, Origen...none of the historians of the first, second or third century said anything about somebody called Jesus."
Yes, I'm actually about to type a paragraph refuting this. I'll do it for those who follow Hagins and have no footing in Christian history:
Origen wrote extant commentaries on the gospels of John and Matthew and the letter to the Romans; he wrote an apologetic work entitled "Against Celsus" which cleared up Roman slanders against the historical Jesus; he wrote two books on the resurrection of Jesus. All one needs to do is pull up a text database of his writings like this one and search "Jesus." The man "Jesus" appears near 400 times in Origen's "Against Celsus" alone. Heracleon, in 170 wrote a commentary on the Gospel of John. You can read it here. That's to say nothing of all the pre-Nicaean writings like Hermas, Polycarp, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, or the Didache, all of which refer to Jesus by name as a historical individual and none of which hint at a Serapis connection. Besides that, Romans like Pliny the Younger, Celsus, Lucian, the Jewish historian Josephus and Tacitus mention Jesus, all within 150 years of his life. The Chester Beatty Papyri and Bodmer papyri contain most of the New Testament dating long before Nicaea. I'll stop there. Claims this inane don't warrant extended rebuttal.
To top this off Hagins teaches the Christians of the first three centuries were actually worshiping Serapis-that Serapis was made into Jesus at Nicaeaand Arius was privy to the reality that Jesus didn't exist historically. This is obviously based on Hagins' flub with assuming the "Historia Augusta" is genuine, as previously covered. Beyond that, If you're still incredulous of Hagin's thesis, you clearly don't posses the erudition to consider the irrefutable iconographic juxtaposition of Serapis and Jim Caviezel. Let's pretend to forget Hagins actually makes the equivalent of that argument and proceed to ask some fun questions like good Aristotelians:
Why does Arius in his own writings and arguments at Nicaea appeal to Hebrews and other New Testament texts as authoritative standards if he didn't believe their claims about the historical Jesus? You can read all of Arius' extant writings here. Ray, why did Arius write to Constantineaffirming the existence of the historical Jesus? WE BELIEVE INone God the Father Almighty, and in THE LORD JESUS CHRIST HIS SON, who was begotten of him before all ages, God the Word through whom all things were made, both things in heaven and on earth; WHO DESCENDED, AND BECAME HUMAN, AND SUFFERED, AND ROSE AGAIN, ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN, AND WILL AGAIN COME TO JUDGE THE LIVING AND THE DEAD.At 34:25 Hagins says, "There was one God. 'He ain't got no son': That was Arius' argument."
Virtually every letter we have from Arius affirms God "begat a son." For example, five years before Nicaea in a letter to the bishop of Alexandriahe wrote:We acknowledge One God, alone unbegotten...who begat an only-begotten Son before time and the ages, through whom he made both the ages [Heb 1:2] and all that was made.Pointing to texts in which Arius claims Jesus did not exist as a member of the Trinity in eternity past (the Arian heresy) won't do, Ray. Why does Arius never once bring up Serapis in any of his writings?
I'm sure all that stuff was covered up by the international Catholic conspiracy, right?
A PUBLIC CHALLENGE TO RAY HAGINS
NAME AND CITE A SINGLE LIVING SCHOLAR ON EARTH HOLDING AN ACADEMIC POSITION AT ANY UNIVERSITY IN THE FIELDS OF NEW TESTAMENT OR CHURCH HISTORY WHO BELIEVES THE COUNCIL OF NICAEAINVOLVED SUPPRESSING A CONTENTION BY ARIUS THAT JESUS WAS IN ANYWAY ASSOCIATED WITH SERAPIS.
NAME A SINGLE ONE."Suggested lay-level reading for Rays' followers interested in what really happened with Arius at Nicaea: Roger E. Olson, "The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform" (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 1999).
You can see this with the text reference on page 47 using this online translation of Plutarch's "Moralia".
In regards to Horus being the "seed of Osiris" see R. O. Faulkner," The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts" (Chippenham: Aris the god is within this womb of mine and he is the seed of Osiris."
This material is provided by Edwin Yamauchi. See my post on Kersey Graves here.
The birth story of Krishnais related in the "Srimad Bhagavatam", "canto" 10. You can read it online here.
v. 66-7 of chapter 1 reads, "He [Kamsa] thus in fear of his own death arrested Vasudeva and Devak^i, confined them at home in shackles and killed one after the other each of their newborn sons not knowing whether it would be the 'Never-born' Lord or not." Chapter 2 relates the god's prayers for Krishnain the womb then 3 describes his birth and escape from the prison guards.
For those interested, the Roman sources are pursued by Habermas in "The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the life of Christ" (Joplin: College Press, 1996). There's also R. T. France's "The Evidence for Jesus "(London: Regent College,1986) and an excellent book explaining why New Testament scholars are universally convinced of Jesus' historical existence is Bart D. Ehrmans' "Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth", (USA: HarperCollins, 2012).
