The bible stole 1/2 it's stories from pagan myths

The Flood
Sumerian
In the eleventh tablet of the Semitic Babylonian epic of Gilagamesh is a flood story that is the source for the Noah story. The Gods resolved to cleanse the earth of an overpopulated humanity, but Utnapishtim was warned by the God Ea in a dream. He and some craftsmen built a huge (seven decks encompassing one acre in area) ark. Utnapishtim then loaded it with his family, the craftsmen, and "the seed of all living creatures." The waters rose up, and a storm continued for six days and six nights. The Gods repented and wept upon seeing the global destruction of living beings and stilled the flood on the seventh day. The waters covered everything but the top of the mountain Nisur, where the boat landed. A dove was loosed, but it returned, having found no place to rest. A swallow was sent, but it too returned. Seven days later, after having loosed a raven that did not return to the ark, the people began to emerge. Utnapishtim made a sacrifice to the Gods. He and his wife were given immortality and lived at the end of the earth.

Babylonian
Three times (every 1200 years), the Gods became distressed by the disturbance from human overpopulation. The Gods dealt with the problem first by plague, then by famine. Both times, the God Enki advised humans to bribe the God causing the problem. The third time, Enlil advised the Gods to destroy all humans with a flood, but Enki had Atrahasis build an ark and so escape. Also on the boat were cattle, wild animals and birds, and the family of Atrahasis. After seeing the suffering caused by the flood, the Gods regretted their action, and Enki established barren women and stillbirth to avoid the problem in the future.

Virgin births

"The gods have lived on earth in the likeness of men" was a common saying among ancient pagans, and supernatural events were believed in as explanations of the god's arrival upon earth in human guise.

About two thousand years before the Christian era Mut-em-ua, the virgin Queen of Egypt, was said to have given birth to the Pharaoh Amenkept (or Amenophis) III, who built the temple of Luxor, on the walls of which were represented:-

1. The Annunciation: the god Taht announcing to the virgin Queen that she is about to become a mother.

2. The Immaculate Conception: the god Kneph (the Holy Spirit) mystically impregnating the virgin by holding a cross, the symbol of life, to her mouth.

3. The Birth of the Man-god.

4. The Adoration of the newly born infant by gods and men, including three kings (or Magi ?), who are offering him gifts. In this sculpture the cross again appears as a symbol.

In another Egyptian temple, one dedicated to Hathor, at Denderah, one of the chambers was called "The Hall of the Child in his Cradle"; and in a painting which was once on the walls of that temple, and is now in Paris, we can see represented the Holy Virgin Mother with her Divine Child in her arms. The temple and the painting are undoubtedly pre-Christian.

Thus we find that long before the Christian era there were already pictured in pagan places of worship virgin mothers and their divine children, and that such pictures included scenes of an Annunciation, an Incarnation, and a Birth and Adoration, just as the Gospels written in the second century A.D. describe them, and that these events were in some way connected with the God Taht, who was identified by Gnostics with the Logos.

And, besides these myths about Mut-em-ua and Hathor, many other origins of a virgin birth story can be traced in Egypt.

Horus was said to be the parthenogenetic child of the Virgin Mother, Isis. In the catacombs of Rome black statues of this Egyptian divine Mother and Infant still survive from the early Christian worship of the Virgin and Child to which they were converted. In these the Virgin Mary is represented as a black regress, and often with the face veiled in the true Isis fashion. When Christianity absorbed the pagan myths and rites it adopted also the pagan statues, and renamed them as saints, or even as apostles.

Statues of the goddess Isis with the child Horus in her arms were common in Egypt, and were exported to all neighbouring and to many remote countries, where they are still to be found with new names attached to them-Christian in Europe, Buddhist in Turkestan, Taoist in China and Japan. Figures of the virgin Isis do duty as representations of Mary, of Hariti, of Kuan-Yin, of Kwannon, and of other virgin mothers of gods.

And these were not the only pre-Christian statuettes and engravings of divine mothers and children. On very ancient Athenian coins such figures were stamped. Among the oldest relics of Carthage, of Cyprus, and of Assyria figures of a divine mother and her babe-god are found. Such figures were known under a great variety of names to the followers of various sects; the mothers as Venus, Juno, Mother-Earth, Fortune, etc., and the children as Hercules, Dionysos, Jove, Wealth, etc. In India similar figures are not uncommon, many of them representing Devaki with the babe Krishna at her breast, others representing various less well-known Indian divinities.

In Egypt we also find that "Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, was believed to have been begotten by a deity descending as a ray of moonlight on the cow which was to become the mother of the sacred beast; hence he was regarded as the son of the god."

This miracle was said to be constantly repeated.

An Apis-so, according to Plutarch, said the Mathematici-was conceived every time a cow "in season" happened to be struck by a beam of light from the moon.

The Mathematici, of course, realized that the light of the moon was really the reflection of the light of the sun, and they therefore believed that the moon received her male generative power as proxy for the sun, the creator of all things.

Apis, the living calf, was regarded as a re-incarnation of Osiris, or at any rate as an emblem of the spirit or soul of Osiris.

It is difficult to assign the exact position in the divine hierarchy which polytheists believed their various gods to occupy. Their beliefs probably differed, and were certainly vague. The better-educated classes were doubtless then, as at all times, inclined to be sceptical, and to regard all these stories of different manifestations of divinity as more or less allegorical or symbolic; and, when they were not sceptical, their minds became so entangled in the complexities of metaphysical speculation that the stories they told grew very confused. On the other hand, the ignorant classes, both rich and poor, certainly believed in the most miraculous explanations of the pantheon which the priests could invent. By such people, the more improbable the alleged fact, the better was the story liked.

From this myth of a cow impregnated by a ray from the moon probably originated the story of the rape of Europa by Jove in the guise of a bull; the idea of a god incarnate in a bull easily giving rise to variants of that kind.

Perhaps the most curious and best known variant of the bull-lover theme is the story about Pasiphae, the wife of Minos. She was said to have conceived a violent passion for the bull which Poseidon (Neptune) had sent to her husband. So, with the aid of an artist, named Daedalus, she disguised herself as a cow, and resorted to the meadow in which the bull grazed. The fruit of her union with the bull was the celebrated Minotaur, partly human, partly bovine, which Minos shut up in the Labyrinth. The ancient superstition that monsters have been born from the union of human beings and animals survived until quite recently, and probably still exists among the uneducated and semi-educated. Exact, or comparatively exact, knowledge of the possibilities of hybridization is a science of quite recent growth.

It will be observed that the Minotaur was named after the husband of his mother, as well as after his real father the Tauros. That is a peculiarity of many of these stories.

Another Egyptian god, Ra (the Sun), was said to have been born of a virgin mother, Net (or Neith), and to have had no father.

In many other countries besides Egypt similar stories of the virgin birth of gods were told.

Attis, the Phrygian god, was said to be the son of the virgin Nana, who conceived him by putting in her bosom a ripe almond or pomegranate.

Dionysos, the Grecian God, was said in one version of the myth concerning him to be the son of Zeus out of the virgin goddess Persephone, and in another version to be the miraculously begotten son of Zeus out of the mortal woman Semele. He, according to this story, was taken from his mother's womb before the full period of gestation had expired, and completed his embryonic life in Zeus's thigh. Dionysos was thus half human and half divine, born of a woman and also of a god.

His myth, which was current long before the Christian era, is a remarkable example of the kind of story which could be, and was, invented about a man-god. He was said to have been persecuted by Pentheus, :King of Thebes, the home of his mother; to have been rejected in his own country; and, when bound, to have asserted that his father, God, would set him free whenever he chose to appeal to him. He disappears from earth, but re-appears as a light shining more brightly than the sun, and speaks to his trembling disciples; and he subsequently visits Hades. The story of his birth is alluded to, and the story of his persecution related, in "The Bacchae," which Euripides wrote about 410 B.C., when the myth was already very old and very well known.

Jason, who was slain by Zeus, was said to have been another son of the virgin Persephone, and to have had no father, either human or divine.

Perseus was also said to have been born of a virgin; and it is this story which Justin Martyr, the second-century Christian "Father of the Church," stigmatizes as an invention of the Devil, who, knowing that Christ would subsequently be born of a virgin, counterfeited the miracle before it really took place.

The "Fathers of the Church" frequently gave this explanation of the numerous pre-Christian virgin birth stories to which their rivals tauntingly referred.

Adonis, the Syrian god; Osiris, the first person of the principal Egyptian Trinity; and Mithra, the Persian god whom so many of the Roman soldiers worshipped-all had strange tales told about their births.

At the time when Christianity arose all these gods were worshipped in various parts of the Roman empire.

Attis, Adonis, Dionysos, Osiris, and Mithra were the principal gods in their respective countries; and those countries together formed the greater part of the Eastern provinces of the Roman empire, and of its great rival, the Persian empire.

Classical mythology is full of kindred stories, and the idea of a virgin birth was familiar to all men of that time.

Of Plato it was related that his mother Perictione was a virgin who conceived him immaculately by the god Apollo. Apollo himself revealed the circumstances of this conception to Ariston, the affianced husband of the virgin.

Virginity, perhaps on account of its rarity in those days among women of a marriageable age, had always a halo of sanctity cast over it by barbaric and semi-civilized tribes; and even in civilized Rome itself the Vestal Virgins were looked upon as peculiarly sacred.

The Apocolpse-
Portents
Ragnar?k will be preceded by the Fimbulwinter, the winter of winters. Three successive winters will follow each other with no summer in between. As a result, conflicts and feuds will break out, and all morality will disappear.

The wolf Skoll and his brother Hati will finally devour Sol (the Sun) and her brother Mani (the Moon) respectively, after a perpetual chase. The stars will vanish from the sky, plunging the earth into darkness.

The earth will shudder, so violently that trees will be uprooted, and mountains will fall, and every bond and fetter will snap and sever, freeing Loki, the God of Mischief, and his ferocious son Fenrir. This terrible wolf's slavering mouth will gape wide open, so wide that his lower jaw scrapes against the ground and his upper jaw presses against the sky. He will gape even more widely if there is room. Flames will dance in his eye and leap from his nostrils.


Faroese stamp depicting the beginning of Ragnar?kEggther, watchman of the Jotuns, will sit on his grave mound and strum his harp, smiling grimly. The red cock Fjalar will crow to the giants and the golden cock Gullinkambi will crow to the Gods. A third cock,[3] rust red, will raise the dead in Hel.

J?rmungandr, the Midgard serpent, and Loki's other monstrous offspring will rise from the deep ocean bed to proceed towards the land, twisting and writhing in fury on their way, causing the seas to rear up and lash against the land. With every breath, the serpent will spew venom, staining the earth and the sky in poison.

From the east, the army of Jotuns, led by Hrym, will leave their home in Jotunheim towards the battlefield of Vigrid (?sk?pnir).

From the north, the grisly ship Naglfar (made from the nails of dead men), which will be set free by the tsunami and flooding caused by J?rmungandr will set sail towards Vigrid, with Loki, now unbound, as the helmsman, and Hel, with all those from her realm by the same name, as the deadweight.

The world will be in uproar, the air will quake with booms, blares and echoes. Amid this turmoil, the fire Giants of Muspelheim, led by Surtr, will advance from the south and tear apart the sky itself as they too, close in on Vigrid. Surtr will brandish a fierce fire sword, the Sword of Revenge, that consumes everything in his path with flames. As Surtr and the others ride over Bifr?st, the rainbow bridge will crack and break behind them. Garm, the hellhound bound in front of Gnipahellir, will also get free. He will join the fire Giants on their march.

So all the Jotuns and all the inmates of Hel, Fenrir, J?rmungandr, Garm, Surtr and the blazing sons of Muspelheim, will gather on Vigrid. They will all but fill that plain that stretches one hundred leagues in every direction.

Meanwhile, Heimdall, being the first of the Gods to see the enemies approaching, will blow his Giallar horn, sounding such a blast that will be heard throughout the nine worlds. All the Gods will wake and at once meet in council. Odin will then mount Sleipnir and gallop to M?mir's spring and consult M?mir on his own and his people's behalf.

Then, Yggdrasil, the world tree, will shake from root to summit because the dragon N??h?ggr has chewed through its roots. Everything on the earth, in the heavens, and Hel will quiver. All ?sir and Einherjar will don their battle dresses. This vast host (800 men can stand abreast in each of Valhalla's 540 gates totaling in 432,000 warriors) will march towards Vigrid and Odin will ride at their head, wearing a golden helmet and a shining corselet, brandishing Gungnir.


[edit] Final battle

Tyr chaining Fenrir.Odin will make straight for Fenrir; and Thor, right beside him, will be unable to help because J?rmungandr, his old enemy, will at once attack him. Freyr will fight the fire Giant Surtr, but will become the first of all Gods to lose as he has given his own good sword to his servant Sk?rnir. It will still be a long struggle though, before Freyr will succumb. Tyr will battle Garm and both will slay the other. Likewise, Heimdall will fight Loki and neither will survive the evenly matched encounter.

Thor will kill J?rmungandr with his hammer Mjollnir, but only be able to stagger back nine steps before falling dead himself, poisoned by the venom that J?rmungandr spews over him. Odin will fight with his mighty spear Gungnir against Fenrir but will finally be eaten by the wolf after a long battle.

To avenge his father, Vidar will immediately come forward and place one foot on the wolf's lower jaw. On this foot he will be wearing the shoe which he has been making since the beginning of time; it consists of the strips of leather which men pare off at the toes and heels of their shoes. With one hand he will grasp the wolf's upper jaw and tear its throat asunder, killing it at last.

Then, brandishing the Sword of Revenge, Surtr will burn all Nine worlds with fire and he himself will be consumed by his own destruction. Death will come to all manner of things. Fumes will reek and flames will burst, scorching the sky with fire. The earth will sink into the sea.


[edit] Aftermath and rebirth
Barley will ripen in fields that were never sown. The meadow Idavoll, in the now-destroyed Asgard, will have been spared. The sun will reappear as Sol before being swallowed by Skoll, who will give birth to a daughter as fair as she herself. This maiden daughter will pursue her mother's road in the new sky.


Faroese stamp depicting the return of Baldur and HodurA few gods will survive the ordeal: Odin's brother Vili, Odin's sons Vidar and V?li, Thor's sons M??i and Magni, who will inherit their father's magic hammer Mjolnir, and H?nir, who will hold the staff and foretell what is to come. Baldr and his brother H??r (who both died prior to Ragnar?k) will come up from Hel and dwell in Odin's former hall, Valhalla, in the heavens. Meeting at Idavoll, these gods will sit down together, discuss their hidden lore, and talk over many things that had happened, including the events surrounding the final rise of J?rmungandr and Fenrir. In the waving grass, they will find the golden chessboards that the ?sir used to own, and gaze at them in wonder. (None of the goddesses were mentioned in various accounts of the aftermath of Ragnar?k, but there are assumptions that Frigg, Freyja and some of the other goddesses will survive.)

Two humans will also escape the destruction of the world by hiding themselves deep within Yggdrasil (some say Hodmimir's Wood) where Surtr's sword cannot destroy. They will be called Lif and Lifthrasir. Emerging from their shelter, they will live on morning dew and will repopulate the human world. They will worship their new pantheon of gods, led by Baldr.

There will still be many halls to house the souls of the dead. According to the 'Prose Edda', another heaven exists south of and above Asgard, called Andlang, and a third heaven further above that, called Vidblain; and these places will offer protection while Surtr's fire burns the world. According to both 'Eddas', after Ragnar?k, the best place of all will be Gimli, a building fairer than the sun, roofed with gold, in the heaven. There, the gods will live at peace with themselves and each other. There will be Brimir, a hall on Okolnir ("never cold"), where plenty of good drinks will be served. And there will be Sindri, an excellent hall made wholly of red gold, on Nidafjoll ("dark mountains"). The souls of the good and virtuous will live in these halls.

The Prose Edda also mentions another hall called N?str?nd ("corpse strand"). That place in the underworld will be vast: no sunlight will reach it; all its doors will face north; its walls and roof will be made of wattled snakes, with their heads facing inward, spewing so much poison that it runs in rivers in the hall. Here, oath breakers, murderers and philanderers will wade through those rivers forever.

Hvergelmir, and N??h?ggr, also a survivor of Ragnar?k, will bedevil the bodies of the dead, sucking blood from them.

In this new world, misery will no longer exist and gods and men will live together in peace and harmony. The descendants of Lif and Lifthrasir will inhabit Midgard.

Because a Book comes out later that the real event, this does not automatically mean the story was stolen. I would also point out that the Bible is far more detailed than any of these other stories. And I would have to say if the author of the Bible could write such a popular Book as the Bible, I'm sure
if the story was untrue he would of come up with a better story. The fact is, the story was repeated, because the story was true.

Is it the same for Islam?

I love it when people use this argument, so I can slap them in the face with a Qu'ran.

Usually, that also requires raping a muslim woman and taking it from her, but it's all worth it.

Is it the same for Islam?

I love it when people use this argument, so I can slap them in the face with a Qu'ran.

Usually, that also requires raping a muslim woman and taking it from her, but it's all worth it.

The Flood
Sumerian
In the eleventh tablet of the Semitic Babylonian epic of Gilagamesh is a flood story that is the source for the Noah story. The Gods resolved to cleanse the earth of an overpopulated humanity, but Utnapishtim was warned by the God Ea in a dream. He and some craftsmen built a huge (seven decks encompassing one acre in area) ark. Utnapishtim then loaded it with his family, the craftsmen, and "the seed of all living creatures." The waters rose up, and a storm continued for six days and six nights. The Gods repented and wept upon seeing the global destruction of living beings and stilled the flood on the seventh day. The waters covered everything but the top of the mountain Nisur, where the boat landed. A dove was loosed, but it returned, having found no place to rest. A swallow was sent, but it too returned. Seven days later, after having loosed a raven that did not return to the ark, the people began to emerge. Utnapishtim made a sacrifice to the Gods. He and his wife were given immortality and lived at the end of the earth.

Babylonian
Three times (every 1200 years), the Gods became distressed by the disturbance from human overpopulation. The Gods dealt with the problem first by plague, then by famine. Both times, the God Enki advised humans to bribe the God causing the problem. The third time, Enlil advised the Gods to destroy all humans with a flood, but Enki had Atrahasis build an ark and so escape. Also on the boat were cattle, wild animals and birds, and the family of Atrahasis. After seeing the suffering caused by the flood, the Gods regretted their action, and Enki established barren women and stillbirth to avoid the problem in the future.

Virgin births

"The gods have lived on earth in the likeness of men" was a common saying among ancient pagans, and supernatural events were believed in as explanations of the god's arrival upon earth in human guise.

About two thousand years before the Christian era Mut-em-ua, the virgin Queen of Egypt, was said to have given birth to the Pharaoh Amenkept (or Amenophis) III, who built the temple of Luxor, on the walls of which were represented:-

1. The Annunciation: the god Taht announcing to the virgin Queen that she is about to become a mother.

2. The Immaculate Conception: the god Kneph (the Holy Spirit) mystically impregnating the virgin by holding a cross, the symbol of life, to her mouth.

3. The Birth of the Man-god.

4. The Adoration of the newly born infant by gods and men, including three kings (or Magi ?), who are offering him gifts. In this sculpture the cross again appears as a symbol.

In another Egyptian temple, one dedicated to Hathor, at Denderah, one of the chambers was called "The Hall of the Child in his Cradle"; and in a painting which was once on the walls of that temple, and is now in Paris, we can see represented the Holy Virgin Mother with her Divine Child in her arms. The temple and the painting are undoubtedly pre-Christian.

Thus we find that long before the Christian era there were already pictured in pagan places of worship virgin mothers and their divine children, and that such pictures included scenes of an Annunciation, an Incarnation, and a Birth and Adoration, just as the Gospels written in the second century A.D. describe them, and that these events were in some way connected with the God Taht, who was identified by Gnostics with the Logos.

And, besides these myths about Mut-em-ua and Hathor, many other origins of a virgin birth story can be traced in Egypt.

Horus was said to be the parthenogenetic child of the Virgin Mother, Isis. In the catacombs of Rome black statues of this Egyptian divine Mother and Infant still survive from the early Christian worship of the Virgin and Child to which they were converted. In these the Virgin Mary is represented as a black regress, and often with the face veiled in the true Isis fashion. When Christianity absorbed the pagan myths and rites it adopted also the pagan statues, and renamed them as saints, or even as apostles.

Statues of the goddess Isis with the child Horus in her arms were common in Egypt, and were exported to all neighbouring and to many remote countries, where they are still to be found with new names attached to them-Christian in Europe, Buddhist in Turkestan, Taoist in China and Japan. Figures of the virgin Isis do duty as representations of Mary, of Hariti, of Kuan-Yin, of Kwannon, and of other virgin mothers of gods.

And these were not the only pre-Christian statuettes and engravings of divine mothers and children. On very ancient Athenian coins such figures were stamped. Among the oldest relics of Carthage, of Cyprus, and of Assyria figures of a divine mother and her babe-god are found. Such figures were known under a great variety of names to the followers of various sects; the mothers as Venus, Juno, Mother-Earth, Fortune, etc., and the children as Hercules, Dionysos, Jove, Wealth, etc. In India similar figures are not uncommon, many of them representing Devaki with the babe Krishna at her breast, others representing various less well-known Indian divinities.

In Egypt we also find that "Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, was believed to have been begotten by a deity descending as a ray of moonlight on the cow which was to become the mother of the sacred beast; hence he was regarded as the son of the god."

This miracle was said to be constantly repeated.

An Apis-so, according to Plutarch, said the Mathematici-was conceived every time a cow "in season" happened to be struck by a beam of light from the moon.

The Mathematici, of course, realized that the light of the moon was really the reflection of the light of the sun, and they therefore believed that the moon received her male generative power as proxy for the sun, the creator of all things.

Apis, the living calf, was regarded as a re-incarnation of Osiris, or at any rate as an emblem of the spirit or soul of Osiris.

It is difficult to assign the exact position in the divine hierarchy which polytheists believed their various gods to occupy. Their beliefs probably differed, and were certainly vague. The better-educated classes were doubtless then, as at all times, inclined to be sceptical, and to regard all these stories of different manifestations of divinity as more or less allegorical or symbolic; and, when they were not sceptical, their minds became so entangled in the complexities of metaphysical speculation that the stories they told grew very confused. On the other hand, the ignorant classes, both rich and poor, certainly believed in the most miraculous explanations of the pantheon which the priests could invent. By such people, the more improbable the alleged fact, the better was the story liked.

From this myth of a cow impregnated by a ray from the moon probably originated the story of the rape of Europa by Jove in the guise of a bull; the idea of a god incarnate in a bull easily giving rise to variants of that kind.

Perhaps the most curious and best known variant of the bull-lover theme is the story about Pasiphae, the wife of Minos. She was said to have conceived a violent passion for the bull which Poseidon (Neptune) had sent to her husband. So, with the aid of an artist, named Daedalus, she disguised herself as a cow, and resorted to the meadow in which the bull grazed. The fruit of her union with the bull was the celebrated Minotaur, partly human, partly bovine, which Minos shut up in the Labyrinth. The ancient superstition that monsters have been born from the union of human beings and animals survived until quite recently, and probably still exists among the uneducated and semi-educated. Exact, or comparatively exact, knowledge of the possibilities of hybridization is a science of quite recent growth.

It will be observed that the Minotaur was named after the husband of his mother, as well as after his real father the Tauros. That is a peculiarity of many of these stories.

Another Egyptian god, Ra (the Sun), was said to have been born of a virgin mother, Net (or Neith), and to have had no father.

In many other countries besides Egypt similar stories of the virgin birth of gods were told.

Attis, the Phrygian god, was said to be the son of the virgin Nana, who conceived him by putting in her bosom a ripe almond or pomegranate.

Dionysos, the Grecian God, was said in one version of the myth concerning him to be the son of Zeus out of the virgin goddess Persephone, and in another version to be the miraculously begotten son of Zeus out of the mortal woman Semele. He, according to this story, was taken from his mother's womb before the full period of gestation had expired, and completed his embryonic life in Zeus's thigh. Dionysos was thus half human and half divine, born of a woman and also of a god.

His myth, which was current long before the Christian era, is a remarkable example of the kind of story which could be, and was, invented about a man-god. He was said to have been persecuted by Pentheus, :King of Thebes, the home of his mother; to have been rejected in his own country; and, when bound, to have asserted that his father, God, would set him free whenever he chose to appeal to him. He disappears from earth, but re-appears as a light shining more brightly than the sun, and speaks to his trembling disciples; and he subsequently visits Hades. The story of his birth is alluded to, and the story of his persecution related, in "The Bacchae," which Euripides wrote about 410 B.C., when the myth was already very old and very well known.

Jason, who was slain by Zeus, was said to have been another son of the virgin Persephone, and to have had no father, either human or divine.

Perseus was also said to have been born of a virgin; and it is this story which Justin Martyr, the second-century Christian "Father of the Church," stigmatizes as an invention of the Devil, who, knowing that Christ would subsequently be born of a virgin, counterfeited the miracle before it really took place.

The "Fathers of the Church" frequently gave this explanation of the numerous pre-Christian virgin birth stories to which their rivals tauntingly referred.

Adonis, the Syrian god; Osiris, the first person of the principal Egyptian Trinity; and Mithra, the Persian god whom so many of the Roman soldiers worshipped-all had strange tales told about their births.

At the time when Christianity arose all these gods were worshipped in various parts of the Roman empire.

Attis, Adonis, Dionysos, Osiris, and Mithra were the principal gods in their respective countries; and those countries together formed the greater part of the Eastern provinces of the Roman empire, and of its great rival, the Persian empire.

Classical mythology is full of kindred stories, and the idea of a virgin birth was familiar to all men of that time.

Of Plato it was related that his mother Perictione was a virgin who conceived him immaculately by the god Apollo. Apollo himself revealed the circumstances of this conception to Ariston, the affianced husband of the virgin.

Virginity, perhaps on account of its rarity in those days among women of a marriageable age, had always a halo of sanctity cast over it by barbaric and semi-civilized tribes; and even in civilized Rome itself the Vestal Virgins were looked upon as peculiarly sacred.

The Apocolpse-
Portents
Ragnar?k will be preceded by the Fimbulwinter, the winter of winters. Three successive winters will follow each other with no summer in between. As a result, conflicts and feuds will break out, and all morality will disappear.

The wolf Skoll and his brother Hati will finally devour Sol (the Sun) and her brother Mani (the Moon) respectively, after a perpetual chase. The stars will vanish from the sky, plunging the earth into darkness.

The earth will shudder, so violently that trees will be uprooted, and mountains will fall, and every bond and fetter will snap and sever, freeing Loki, the God of Mischief, and his ferocious son Fenrir. This terrible wolf's slavering mouth will gape wide open, so wide that his lower jaw scrapes against the ground and his upper jaw presses against the sky. He will gape even more widely if there is room. Flames will dance in his eye and leap from his nostrils.


Faroese stamp depicting the beginning of Ragnar?kEggther, watchman of the Jotuns, will sit on his grave mound and strum his harp, smiling grimly. The red cock Fjalar will crow to the giants and the golden cock Gullinkambi will crow to the Gods. A third cock,[3] rust red, will raise the dead in Hel.

J?rmungandr, the Midgard serpent, and Loki's other monstrous offspring will rise from the deep ocean bed to proceed towards the land, twisting and writhing in fury on their way, causing the seas to rear up and lash against the land. With every breath, the serpent will spew venom, staining the earth and the sky in poison.

From the east, the army of Jotuns, led by Hrym, will leave their home in Jotunheim towards the battlefield of Vigrid (?sk?pnir).

From the north, the grisly ship Naglfar (made from the nails of dead men), which will be set free by the tsunami and flooding caused by J?rmungandr will set sail towards Vigrid, with Loki, now unbound, as the helmsman, and Hel, with all those from her realm by the same name, as the deadweight.

The world will be in uproar, the air will quake with booms, blares and echoes. Amid this turmoil, the fire Giants of Muspelheim, led by Surtr, will advance from the south and tear apart the sky itself as they too, close in on Vigrid. Surtr will brandish a fierce fire sword, the Sword of Revenge, that consumes everything in his path with flames. As Surtr and the others ride over Bifr?st, the rainbow bridge will crack and break behind them. Garm, the hellhound bound in front of Gnipahellir, will also get free. He will join the fire Giants on their march.

So all the Jotuns and all the inmates of Hel, Fenrir, J?rmungandr, Garm, Surtr and the blazing sons of Muspelheim, will gather on Vigrid. They will all but fill that plain that stretches one hundred leagues in every direction.

Meanwhile, Heimdall, being the first of the Gods to see the enemies approaching, will blow his Giallar horn, sounding such a blast that will be heard throughout the nine worlds. All the Gods will wake and at once meet in council. Odin will then mount Sleipnir and gallop to M?mir's spring and consult M?mir on his own and his people's behalf.

Then, Yggdrasil, the world tree, will shake from root to summit because the dragon N??h?ggr has chewed through its roots. Everything on the earth, in the heavens, and Hel will quiver. All ?sir and Einherjar will don their battle dresses. This vast host (800 men can stand abreast in each of Valhalla's 540 gates totaling in 432,000 warriors) will march towards Vigrid and Odin will ride at their head, wearing a golden helmet and a shining corselet, brandishing Gungnir.


[edit] Final battle

Tyr chaining Fenrir.Odin will make straight for Fenrir; and Thor, right beside him, will be unable to help because J?rmungandr, his old enemy, will at once attack him. Freyr will fight the fire Giant Surtr, but will become the first of all Gods to lose as he has given his own good sword to his servant Sk?rnir. It will still be a long struggle though, before Freyr will succumb. Tyr will battle Garm and both will slay the other. Likewise, Heimdall will fight Loki and neither will survive the evenly matched encounter.

Thor will kill J?rmungandr with his hammer Mjollnir, but only be able to stagger back nine steps before falling dead himself, poisoned by the venom that J?rmungandr spews over him. Odin will fight with his mighty spear Gungnir against Fenrir but will finally be eaten by the wolf after a long battle.

To avenge his father, Vidar will immediately come forward and place one foot on the wolf's lower jaw. On this foot he will be wearing the shoe which he has been making since the beginning of time; it consists of the strips of leather which men pare off at the toes and heels of their shoes. With one hand he will grasp the wolf's upper jaw and tear its throat asunder, killing it at last.

Then, brandishing the Sword of Revenge, Surtr will burn all Nine worlds with fire and he himself will be consumed by his own destruction. Death will come to all manner of things. Fumes will reek and flames will burst, scorching the sky with fire. The earth will sink into the sea.


[edit] Aftermath and rebirth
Barley will ripen in fields that were never sown. The meadow Idavoll, in the now-destroyed Asgard, will have been spared. The sun will reappear as Sol before being swallowed by Skoll, who will give birth to a daughter as fair as she herself. This maiden daughter will pursue her mother's road in the new sky.


Faroese stamp depicting the return of Baldur and HodurA few gods will survive the ordeal: Odin's brother Vili, Odin's sons Vidar and V?li, Thor's sons M??i and Magni, who will inherit their father's magic hammer Mjolnir, and H?nir, who will hold the staff and foretell what is to come. Baldr and his brother H??r (who both died prior to Ragnar?k) will come up from Hel and dwell in Odin's former hall, Valhalla, in the heavens. Meeting at Idavoll, these gods will sit down together, discuss their hidden lore, and talk over many things that had happened, including the events surrounding the final rise of J?rmungandr and Fenrir. In the waving grass, they will find the golden chessboards that the ?sir used to own, and gaze at them in wonder. (None of the goddesses were mentioned in various accounts of the aftermath of Ragnar?k, but there are assumptions that Frigg, Freyja and some of the other goddesses will survive.)

Two humans will also escape the destruction of the world by hiding themselves deep within Yggdrasil (some say Hodmimir's Wood) where Surtr's sword cannot destroy. They will be called Lif and Lifthrasir. Emerging from their shelter, they will live on morning dew and will repopulate the human world. They will worship their new pantheon of gods, led by Baldr.

There will still be many halls to house the souls of the dead. According to the 'Prose Edda', another heaven exists south of and above Asgard, called Andlang, and a third heaven further above that, called Vidblain; and these places will offer protection while Surtr's fire burns the world. According to both 'Eddas', after Ragnar?k, the best place of all will be Gimli, a building fairer than the sun, roofed with gold, in the heaven. There, the gods will live at peace with themselves and each other. There will be Brimir, a hall on Okolnir ("never cold"), where plenty of good drinks will be served. And there will be Sindri, an excellent hall made wholly of red gold, on Nidafjoll ("dark mountains"). The souls of the good and virtuous will live in these halls.

The Prose Edda also mentions another hall called N?str?nd ("corpse strand"). That place in the underworld will be vast: no sunlight will reach it; all its doors will face north; its walls and roof will be made of wattled snakes, with their heads facing inward, spewing so much poison that it runs in rivers in the hall. Here, oath breakers, murderers and philanderers will wade through those rivers forever.

Hvergelmir, and N??h?ggr, also a survivor of Ragnar?k, will bedevil the bodies of the dead, sucking blood from them.

In this new world, misery will no longer exist and gods and men will live together in peace and harmony. The descendants of Lif and Lifthrasir will inhabit Midgard.

This is why the Bible should not be interpreted literally. Personally, I believe these symbolic events and stories are paradigms of divine teaching. That's right -- God teaches critical lessons to Man through them. That's why they're so common, and that's how they found their way into the Bible. As I've said all along -- the Bible is not history or science. It's religious literature, and yes, literature is important.

If the Bible is just a Book of make believe stories, why now are they finding strong evidence showing that these stories really did happen? Such as the Red Sea Crossing. Divers are now finding the coral encrusted remnants of pharoahs army, and they are finding them between two granit pillars that were erected there to mark the spot thousands of years ago.

God does not need make believe stories, nor is God a liar. God makes His point with the truth. The critical lesson God is teaching is with the truth, and it is man who works to deny that truth.

But Truth is Truth. Truth doesn't need to be contained strictly in a relatively small library of books created by one or two specific tribes of people. The Holy Spirit ranges out amongst all humankind, and infuses the willing with its power and glory. The power of God and His Son, Jesus Christ, works its magic in ways we'll never understand completely. And the stories in the Bible aren't necessarily 'make-believe'. They are metaphors for the standard fight of all good people against Evil. How often have you dwelled in the belly of the beast? How many floods, destructive of Truth, have you experienced and survived? How often have you seen the Truth dragged out in public view and murdered by corrupt mobs determined to do wrong? This is life. This is our common plight.

I wonder if, two thousand years from now, they will think the same of Shakespear as they do of the Bible today? Or perhaps a better choice would be L. Ron Hubbard? Or perhaps Ann Landers?

Shakespear, L. Ron Hubbard, Ann Landers did not fulfill the three hundred prophecies of the Old Testament. Jesus Christ did. And this world will not see another 2,000 years because the Bible tells us when the Jews return to their land of Israel, and retake Jerusalem, it will be that generation that will see the return of Jesus Christ.

Shouldn't he have already come back then?

And Nostrodomus said a LOT of things that have been construed to have come true, some would say...more then the bible. Maybe he was jesus.

Is it the same for Islam?

I love it when people use this argument, so I can slap them in the face with a Qu'ran.

Usually, that also requires raping a muslim woman and taking it from her, but it's all worth it.