Saturday, May 20, 2017

Smorgasbord Debating


Farrell Till replies to an article by a Christian who attempts to refute the idea that the concept of resurrection from the dead had pagan origins (2005):

 Till's comment:
I can't help wondering about the title of McFall's response to my article. Is he claiming that the concept of resurrection from the dead did not originate prior to the advent of Christianity? Is it his position that prior to the resurrection of Jesus, there were no concepts of returning from the dead in any of the religions that had preceded Christianity? He needs to clarify his position.

McFall's article begins:

Here McFall referred to my first reply to his Osiris article as "thought provoking," but in his postings on the Errancy list, he didn't seem to think it was so thought provoking. On 3/15/02, he urged me to concede defeat and, in fact, even came close to pleading for me to concede. "Look Farrell," he said, "I'm not going [to] tout victory all over the net if you were to admit error on the bodily resurrection similarity." He said this even before I had written this reply to his rebuttal article, but if I conceded defeat to every would-be apologist who unilaterally declares victory in internet debates with me, I would spend most of my time conceding defeat. I'm perfectly willing to let our audiences judge who needs to concede defeat, and I'm confident that those who examine this issue in detail will see that I am not the one who should concede.

While it is true that neither Mr. Till nor I have intentions of persuading each other personally, our approach to issues remain similar in that we seek to influence those who may be on the fence of faith. On that tone, let's now consider the issue at hand.

On at least this one point, McFall and I agree. I never enter a debate with any illusions that I will convince my opponent that his position is wrong. I do, however, enter debates with confidence that Bible believers whose minds have not yet rusted shut will be able to see that the inerrancy position is untenable. In this case, we are not debating inerrancy directly, but it is certainly indirectly involved, because if it can be shown that a New Testament story as vitally important as the resurrection of Jesus simply imitated myths that had preceded it, this would seriously undermine the claim that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant "word of God." My position is that the New Testament claim that Jesus rose from the dead was not at all "unique," as McFall claims, but was simply another spin on ancient myths about resurrected savior-gods, one of which was the Egyptian myth that Osiris was resurrected.

Did the New Testament writers borrow the resurrection concept from myths? If they did, are there any observable parallels that would lend credibility to that hypothesis?

Readers should expect McFall to quibble about "observable parallels," because this is a familiar biblicist tactic when they debate the issue of similarities in Christianity and pagan myths. They will emphasize the slightest differences in the Christian myths and their earlier counterparts in paganism and then argue that these differences make the Christian versions "unique," and so they are not imitations or "spin offs" of earlier pagan myths.

An Akkadian stela contained an inscription that told of king Sargon's apparently illegitimate birth to a priestess, who made a basket of reeds, put the infant Sargon in it, and set him afloat on the Euphrates River. He was rescued by a gardener who taught him the art of cultivation until he was noticed by the goddess Inanna, who took him to the court of king Urzabal, where he was given the name Sargon and later became king. There are many differences in this tale and the one told later about Moses, who was put into a reed ark and later rescued by Pharaoh's daughter, but the "core" elements of the story, i.e., the endangered child set afloat in a reed basket and the rescue and subsequent rise to prominence in a royal court, are so strikingly parallel that one would have to have his head in the sand to deny that the tale about Moses was just a variation of an earlier legend.

I'll use an example from secular literature to show the absurdity of the fundamentalist claim that unless all details in a biblical story are exactly parallel to earlier pagan myths, then no borrowing from mythology occurred. If asked what author created the "super sleuth," who was able to solve any baffling crime, most people would likely say Sir Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes was the original of a long line of such master detectives, but in reality Edgar Allan Poe was the creator of this archetype when he published "Murders in the Rue Morgue," which introduced C. Auguste Dupin, an "unofficial" French detective with amazing deductive skills that enabled him to solve a crime that had baffled the police. Poe wrote two other Dupin mysteries, and Sherlock Holmes and all the other super detectives who came later were "spin-offs" of the original Dupin. Many differences exist in the various detective series that came after Poe's original. The name of Doyle's super sleuth, for example, was Holmes, whereas the name of Poe's original was Dupin. Holmes was British, whereas Dupin was French, and so on. Despite the many differences, however, the similarities are such that literary experts agree that Poe created the super detective that was later imitated by various authors. Poe's formula entailed the commission of a baffling crime, which was followed by a bungled investigation by the official police, who had wrongly accused an innocent suspect. At this point, Dupin would enter the investigation, discover clues overlooked by the police, and clear the innocent party by identifying who had really committed the crime. How many times have readers seen this "formula" in detective stories? To argue that Doyle's super detective wasn't a spin-off of the original because his name and nationality were different and such like would be quibbling not as likely to occur in critical analyses of secular literature, because no sacred beliefs are at stake in secular literature. We can, however, expect to see McFall so quibbling in the issue before us, because he has an emotionally important religious belief to defend.

McFall asked above if there are any "observable parallels that would lend credibility to [the] hypothesis" that the Christian resurrection claim was borrowed from paganism. Well, duh, in both cases (Osiris and Jesus), a man died and was "revivified," to borrow McFall's favorite expression in this matter. That isn't an "observable parallel"?

Or, do skeptics create their own parallels that are made plausible by selective descriptions? Perhaps even by unsubstantiated presentments? And, do skeptics take what they think they know about ancient obscure myths (like those we find about Osiris) and amalgamate (i. e. unite) them with Christian elements that are heterogeneous (i. e. dissimilar in ingredient)? Or, are these alleged parallels real? After all, so the skeptics tell us, there are many tales of dying and raising [sic] gods in the ancient world (i. e. Mithra, Demeter, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, Tummuz, etc.). In this essay, we will confront Mr. Till's formulated parallels with original texts and observe those parallels evaporate in the heat of the facts, and, we will also consider the evidences surrounding Jesus Christ's resurrection and will find that the evidences are of a kind that offer a much greater credibility and realism than any other religious "resurrection" claim. I believe that this should cause the average skeptic to take a moment of pause, to, rethink through the strengths of the available evidences.

We're going to see an evaporation all right, but it is going to be McFall's claim of "uniqueness" in the New Testament resurrection claim that will evaporate, because McFall's selective quoting from "original texts" is going to be exposed to show that the overall body of Egyptian literature clearly depicted in some versions of the myth a bodily resurrection of Osiris. Admittedly, this was not a bodily resurrection in which the one "revivified" remained on earth nearly as long as the Christian narratives claim for Jesus, but the Egyptian myths did indicate that there was at least a short time when the "revivified" Osiris was on earth, and I know of no one who would claim that the resurrection of Osiris was exactly parallel to Jesus's.

That aside for the moment, I found McFall's comments in this paragraph very interesting. He indicates a belief that the "evidences" for the resurrection of Jesus "offer a much greater credibility" than any other resurrection claim, so if he really believes this, I would think that in addition to debating the issue of parallels in the Osiris/Jesus resurrections, McFall would be eager to defend the credibility of the resurrection of Jesus, but when I proposed to him that we extend the debate to include his "defense of the resurrection in general," he replied that he would not consider this until I had conceded that I was wrong in the Osiris matter (Errancy List, 3/15/02). In other words, he was offering to accept my proposal if I would just admit that I was wrong about the resurrection of Osiris. This, of course, was a stipulation that he knew I would not agree to, so I can only assume that he doesn't have much enthusiasm for defending a resurrection claim that he thinks has a much greater credibility than any other such claim. If the situation had been reversed and he had proposed a debate on the resurrection of Jesus after the Osiris issue had been debated, I would have accepted without hesitation.

By way of enlightenment, based on a thorough study of Mr. Till's interpretations in light of the facts, the next time you hear such alleged comparisons between Osiris and Jesus Christ, you too may be compelled to throw up your hands and say, "OH-SIGH-ris...not that again!"

Cute, but I suspect that the hand throwing and sighing won't be nearly as widespread as McFall seems to think. More likely, the next time McFall contends that Egyptian mythology didn't depict a bodily resurrection of Osiris--as he will undoubtedly do--skeptics will do the hand-throwing and sighing: "Is McFall still singing that same tune?"


"while this article focuses for the most part on Mr. Till's formulated parallels between Jesus Christ and Osiris, it nonetheless will adequately equip Christians with enough critical information to give a ready response (1 Peter 3:15) to those who have expressed similar analogues."

I chose to come at this topic from an examination of Mr. Till's interpretation because of the comments he made in his debate with Dr. Geisler (of Southern Evangelical Seminary) because he asked his audience to "go examine the evidence" of Osiris [sic] bodily resurrection and to compare its similarity to the resurrection of Jesus Christ [See: Geisler-Till Debate.] In the process of examining the evidence for Osiris [sic] resurrection as explained by Mr. Till, it was necessary to give Mr. Till plenty of space within my article to adequately present his view. It is worth noting that out of 3,280 words in that essay, 815 were Mr. Till's own. I quoted Mr. Till at length to diminish the possibility of misinterpreting or misrepresenting his view, and, since Mr. Till is so well known in skeptical circles, I thought it appropriate to dismantle the interpretation of the head gun. Hence, it was not my intention to discredit Farrell Till, on the contrary, the intention was/is to discredit the resurrection of Osiris according to Farrell Till.

Till's Reply:
It sounds to me as if McFall is splitting hairs and then sanding down each part, but this is a very minor issue with me. However, since McFall made the comments above, I'll restate my opinion. If readers will examine his original article they should have little difficulty seeing that he had obviously targeted me. If his intention was as he claimed above, he could have entitled his article "The Resurrection of Osiris" (without the "According to Farrell Till") and then proceeded to identify me as a proponent of the view that the New Testament resurrection of Jesus borrowed from pagan myths. He could have verified that this was my position by quoting what I had said in the debate with Geisler, after which he could have examined the claim that Osiris was bodily resurrected without constantly referring to Till, Till, Till, Till, etc., except, of course, when he was quoting me.

This is not a complaint, because I consider personal attacks on me complimentary. They show that biblicists consider my materials on biblical inerrancy important enough to warrant their time and space to try to refute. Whether I am the "head gun" of skepticism, as McFall claims, is another matter entirely. I personally don't consider myself the head gun, because, as McFall surely knows after a long tenure on the Errancy internet list, there are several qualified spokesmen for the skeptical view of the Bible. I prefer to think that we complement each other. If one is weak in a particular field, there is usually someone who can jump in and fill the gap. Tim Taylor, for example, is a member of the Errancy list, who has sent McFall into silence on the Osiris issue, and I will be quoting him later in this reply. Readers will see that he is obviously far enough at the "top" to give McFall more than he can handle in this matter.

Even McFall apparently thinks that I am not the "top gun" of skepticism, because he has put a lot of effort into getting the opinions of skeptics like Jeff Lowder, Richard Carrier, Robert Price, and Earl Doherty on my position in this debate. I can only assume that he did this because he thought that what these skeptics would have to say would carry more weight than my opinion. McFall received replies from Carrier and Doherty, which I may publish elsewhere on this site, but I doubt that McFall received from them what he had gone looking for.

I'll admit quite honestly that my intention in this reply will be twofold: (1)  First, I want to show that the myths of Osiris's resurrection were obvious forerunners of the Christ myth.  (2)  I want to discredit McFall, because he has exhibited a cockiness on the internet, which, although nothing like Robert Turkel's, needs to be cut down to size.  Because of number (2), readers should expect to see me hammering away to expose McFall's position. I make no apology for doing that.

McFall's  Article  Continues:
But now let's get on with discussing the facts with a view to address the points that Farrell Till made in his response to my article.

Till's Reply:
Yes, let's do get on. I'm eager for everyone to see just how weak McFall's position is. I understand from past communications with him that he went to the internet as a believer in biblical inerrancy but soon learned that this was an indefensible position, so he is presently arguing that the Bible is errant but still, in some sense that he can't seem to explain, the "inspired word of God." He was able to see the foolishness of trying to defend biblical inerrancy, but he can't quite bring himself to reject the extremely unlikely claim that a savior-god was resurrected from the dead.  Perhaps he will yet come to see that he is fighting windmills in his effort to deny that Christianity plagiarized from pagan mythology.

McFall's Article Continues:
Diversity In The Accounts of Osiris: Are there variations in the versions that relate the myth of Osiris? Well, it was interesting to see Mr. Till tell readers that much of my "confusion about the Osiris myth is rooted" in my "failure to recognize the diversity in Egyptian myths," when in fact, these recognized diversities were the point [Diodorus Siculus I, Books I-II.34, Loeb Classical Library (279), Translated by C.H. Oldfather. Harvard University Press Cambridge Mass., London, England ISBN 0-674-99307-1. Source provided by Tim Taylor (Errancy, 6/30/01)]. It seems Mr. Till is making it appear to readers that the present writer "erred by relying on versions of the Osiris myth that were either vague about the nature of his resurrection or else had left it out entirely." But what of this confusion?

In prior confrontations with Mr. Till, he had forcibly argued, that, "different versions of the myth will disagree in some details, but an old inerrantist comment about inconsistencies in the gospel accounts of the resurrection is worth adapting to the Osiris myth: the important thing is that all of the accounts agree that Osiris was killed and resurrected to life" (Errancy,02/17/01). However, in Mr. Till's most recent  response to me, he seemed to have compromised that position by saying, that, "in some of the myths about Osiris, resurrection was't [sic] mentioned, but in others he was clearly resurrected to life," and, that he had "never claimed that all versions of the Osiris myth contained direct accounts of a resurrection but only that some of them did." Admittedly, I became a bit confused after those comments in light of his original one. Fortunately, however, Mr. Till put those recent comments into perspective in lieu of the confusion:

"I need to point out that my summation of the Osiris myth was based on what I had read in the accounts of Plutarch and other more popular versions of the myth, so when I said all of the accounts had agreed that Osiris was resurrected, I was referring to the sources from which I had complied my summary. It still remains true that some versions of the myth did not mention a resurrection."

It seems I misunderstood the scope of what Mr. Till meant by "all." Nevertheless, I did learn from Mr. Till through previous correspondences, that, he had consulted the versions of the myth as related by Plutarch (as mentioned above), Diodorus of Siculus, and the Book of the Dead. Even though Mr. Till mentioned to me that these works were temporarily obtained through interlibrary loan processes, he assured me, and others, that, he was nonetheless "personally confident enough in the accuracy" of his note-taking to "stand by" what he has said concerning his assertion "that some versions of the myth had Osiris resurrected on earth, where he remained for a period of time before descending into the netherworld" (Errancy, 2/21/01). Since the present writer has access to all three of the works referenced by Mr. Till, and since these works constitute what Mr. Till considers apropos, then, let's bring "all" of Mr. Till's evidence to the table for a thorough examination of the facts.

Till's Reply:
I'll interrupt here to inject a warning to McFall. Egyptian mythology is such a maze of contradictory versions that he should not make the mistake of assuming that the three sources I named above will be sufficient to settle disputes in this matter. If any or all of these three fail to present details that support my position, other versions will be consulted. If any one of them verifies my position, then I will have established my claim that some versions of the Osiris myth depicted a bodily resurrection. Much to McFall's chagrin, however, we are going to see that more than just one version depicted a bodily resurrection.

In my reply to McFall's first article, I had pointed out that no body of Egyptian priests had ever met to decide which myths were "canonical" and which were not, as church bodies had done in Christian writings. Hence, this had allowed wide diversity and inconsistencies in  Egyptian mythology, which resulted in conflicting versions of the same myth.  I suggested this diversity as a probable source of McFall's misconceptions about the nature of Osiris's resurrection, because his article had seemed to rely on versions of the Osiris myth that were either "vague about the nature of his resurrection or had left it out entirely."  By relying on the opinions of fundamentalist "scholars" like Ronald Nash, who will lean over backwards to find dissimilarities in pagan counterparts of the Christian accounts of virgin birth, Herod's massacre of the children of Bethlehem, the resurrection of Jesus, etc., McFall has not gotten an accurate view of what the broad range of Egyptian literature said about the resurrection of Osiris.  McFall left this issue unaddressed in his reply to my rebuttal of his article. 

McFall's Article Continues:
The Literary Evidence For Osiris' Resurrection: Plutarch's (AD 46-20) work, Isis and Osiris (De Iside Et Osiride), is the most complete ancient work on this myth in existence, and, it was originally dedicated to Clea (Ibid, 351D), a cultured and intelligent priestess at Delphi. In that work we see Plutarch briefly mention Osiris' reanimation in conjunction with the Greek mythical giants of the Titans.

Till's Reply:
I hope that everyone noticed that McFall said that "Plutarch briefly mention[ed] Osiris'reanimation in conjunction with the Greek mythical giants of the Titans" (emphasis added).  His quotation from Plutarch below is truncated (a bad habit that he has), but the quotation refers to the "dismemberment" and "revivification" of Osiris.  McFall calls it a "reanimation," but revivification or reanimation--the reference would be to a return to life, wouldn't it? 
If not, why not?

McFall's Article Continues:
Says Plutarch:
"Furthermore, the tales regarding the Titans and the rites celebrated by night agree with the accounts of the dismemberment of Osiris and his revivification [anabiosesi] and regenesis [paliggenesiais]. Similar agreement is found too in the tales about their sepulchers." (Plutarch, Moralia, De Iside Et Osiride, 365A, (Babbit, LCL, Vol. V.)

Readers should take note that Plutarch devotes about 90 modern pages to the Osiris myth, and it is particularly noteworthy to consider that this is the only piece of evidence in Plutarch's corpus that mentions Osiris' resurrection, and even at that, it's an allusion and not an actual account. What's missing? Well, beside the fact that there is no resurrection narrative, there are also no reported appearances, and, to make this allusion even less credible, it is without a historical foundation as we see by Plutarch's mention of the Titans. In fact, so weak are the evidences surrounding Osiris' resurrection, that, Plutarch even advises Clea that "whenever you hear the traditional tales which the Egyptians tell about the gods...you must not think that any of these tales actually happened in the manner in which they are related" (De Iside Et Osiride, 355B). In contrast, not only does Christ's resurrection have narrations and appearances, it's also undergirded by historical characters, elements of which we will be discussing later on.

Till's Reply:
And when we discuss this "later on," I will remind McFall (as I noted above) that if he is so sure that the resurrection of Jesus was "undergirded" by narrations, appearances, and historical characters, then he should be eager to defend the resurrection of Jesus in a debate like this. When such a debate was suggested to him, however, he dodged the challenge, so I will renew the proposal each time McFall claims that the resurrection of Jesus is supported by such convincing evidence as narrations, appearances, and historical characters. I have been reading Jane Haddam's detective novel True Believers, because I was told that she mentioned Jeff Lowder and me in the book. As I read it, I found that, sure enough, on page 27 of the paperback edition, Lowder and I were mentioned as frequent contributors of freethought articles on the internet. I have also found references to Al Gore, Richard Pryor, Truman Capote, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Somerset Maugham, James Cagney, Ernest Hemingway, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Kaczynski, Bishop Spong, Karla Faye Tucker, Pope John Paul II, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Barbara Ehrenrich, Richard Dawkins, Christina Aguilera, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Loretta Lynn, Nora Roberts, Oliver Stone, Ed McBain, and probably many others who will be in the second half, which I have yet to read. Since all these are the names of actual people, this must mean--according to McFall's logic--that the murder in this novel, which the unofficial detective Gregor Demarkian (another Auguste Dupin knockoff) was called in to solve, must have actually happened. Now if McFall will bother to tell us why none of the references that Haddam made to real people prove that the novel I am reading is historically real, then I'll be glad to explain to him why narratives, "appearances," and historical characters in the New Testament don't prove that Jesus actually rose from the dead. Better yet, if he will agree to debate the resurrection of Jesus in this forum, I'll explain it to him then.

McFall's Article Continues:
Moreover, it is also evident from Plutarch's allusion to Osiris' reanimation, that he usesanabiosesi (revivification) and paliggenesiais (regenesis) as reinterpreted terms of what he understood to be the beliefs of the followers of Osiris. But does the use of a particular term by someone describing something within a cult prove that the word itself was actually part of the cult's terminology? Well, we know that Plutarch could not read Egyptian texts, we also know that "his knowledge of Egyptology was not profound" (Babbitt, Introduction to the Moralia, LCL, Vol. V, pg. 3), and, "in some cases Plutarch was mistaken about Egyptian beliefs" (Mercatante, The Facts On File Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend, pg. 501).

Till's Reply:
So if Plutarch's knowledge of Egyptology was not profound, why wouldn't that minimize the importance of what Plutarch said in the passage that McFall quoted above? Is he asking us to accept the opinion of someone whose knowledge of Egyptology was not profound?  At any rate, McFall should keep in mind that Plutarch's reference to the "revivification" of Osiris would be a reference to his return from the dead.
If not, why not?

McFall's Article Continues:
So, in the opinion of the present writer, that's a legitimate question to ask. Nevertheless, I will grant Mr. Till this sliver of evidence because Plutarch does mention "revivification" (anabiosesi) and "regenesis" (paliggenesiais) in his allusion to Osiris.

Till's Reply:
Excuse me, but wouldn't Plutarch's reference to the "revivification" of Osiris be more than just a "sliver of evidence"?

McFall's Article Continues:
But wait just a minute! Isn't it Mr. Till's argument that Osiris bodily resurrected back to earth?

Till Reply:
Not exactly. It is Till's position that, according to some versions of the Egyptian myth, Osiris was resurrected bodily while he was still on earth after which he quickly ascended into heaven. I, of course, don't believe that Osiris was actually revivified any more than I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was. After all, a myth is a myth, and I stopped believing in myths long ago.

McFall's Article Continues:
It certainly is, and we see that Plutarch doesn't give us any details to confirm Mr. Till's thesis.

Till's Reply:
And, as we have seen, even McFall has noted that Plutarch's knowledge of Egyptian mythology wasn't particularly profound. As we proceed, I will concentrate on showing that McFall's favorite Egyptologist clearly recognized that ancient Egyptian writings and bas-reliefs depicted a bodily resurrection of Osiris, which was then followed by an ascension into heaven. At any rate, if there was any doubt at all that McFall's primary intention was to discredit whom he considered to be the "top gun" in skepticism, the section above should settle the issue. He obviously went out of his way to show that I had made a mistake, and I'm going to surprise him and admit that I was careless in stating my position. Plutarch at best merely implied that Egyptian mythology taught that Osiris was resurrected. I made an error in working from memory, but anyone who has ever tried to study Egyptian records on this subject--or any other mythological subject--knows that this body of literature is so broad that it is almost impossible to remember every detail of the various accounts. As I have noted before, Egyptian clerics did not go through a process of weeding out mythical versions that they considered "uninspired" in order to separate what they considered a "canon" of inspired literature. The result was a maze of conflicting myths that was somewhat like Christians would have if all apocryphal and pseudepigraphic writings had been lumped together in a Bible that would have required several volumes to be published. McFall's favorite scholar explained the reason for the hopelessly contradictory accounts in Egyptian mythology.

In religious theorizings the Egyptians never forgot anything which had been imagined and had found expression in the written word, and they discarded no view or belief, however contradictory, fearing lest they should suffer material loss in this world, and spiritual loss in the next. The result of this was to create in their religion a confusion which is practically unbounded, and we need not wonder that ancient Greek and Roman writers produced histories of Egyptian gods and goddesses which border on the ridiculous (E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris & the Egyptian Resurrection, Dover Publications, vol 1, p.22).

Later on in his article, McFall quoted Dr. Ogden Goelet several times, whom he called "a contemporary non-Christian Egyptologist of high regard," so I'll just quote from the same source McFall cited what Goelet said about contradictory versions of Egyptian myths.

The fragmentary narrative [which Goelet had just summarized] cannot do justice to the richness of the Osiris legend, reconstructed from hundreds of allusions scattered through the BD [Book of the Dead]. The order and nature of events, as well as the participants, varies [sic] not only from chapter to chapter, but within different sections of some of the longer chapters. Some of these references were derived from moments and places in local Osiris festivals which varied from place to place in Egypt. However confusing it may seem, we must bear in mind that Egyptian religious texts tend to collect rather than edit; no attempt was made to reconcile contradictions or to form a continuous tale. It is not surprising that the numerous oral traditions should have given birth to a wide range of phrases, words, and allusions ("A Commentary on the Corpus of Literature and Tradition Which Constitutes The Book of Going Forth by Day," in The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, CA, 1994, p. 149, emphasis added).

Goelet obviously agrees with Budge that the Egyptian myths about Osiris constitute a maze of contradictory accounts. Since writing my first reply to McFall, I have obtained my own copies of Budge's volumes on Egyptian resurrection myths so that I won't have to rely on memory or interlibrary loan to check the claims that McFall is making about Budge's position on Osiris's "revivification." To McFall's chagrin, he is going to see that although I may have previously overstated the clarity of Plutarch's account of this resurrection myth, Budge's translations of Egyptian hieroglyphics clearly show that some versions of the Osiris myth claimed a bodily resurrection.

McFall's Article Continues:
To add insult to injury, the Egyptologist Wallis Budge (who is a very hostile source to Christianity) has this to say about Plutarch allusion:

"Unfortunately he does not say whether Osiris came in the form of a spirit, or in his natural body, which he had raised from the dead..."(Budge, Osiris And The Egyptian Resurrection, pg. 17).

Till's Reply:
Here is an example of how biblicists will selectively quote in order to leave the impression that scholars support the biblicist position. Notice the ellipsis (the three dots) at the end of what McFall quoted above. The ellipsis indicates that something was left out of the quotation, so I am now going to fill in the ellipsis with italic print.

"Unfortunately he [Plutarch] does not say whether Osiris came in the form of a spirit, or in his natural body, which he had raised from the dead, but it is clear that he had the power of speech and thought, and that he appeared in a form which Horus could recognize."

If Osiris had the power of speech and thought after his "revivification" and if Horus was able to recognize him, all this certainly implies that Osiris had risen in the body that Horus was accustomed to seeing. If not, why not? Later, I will discuss other temple inscriptions and depictions in ancient Egyptian bas-reliefs that necessarily implied a bodily resurrection of Osiris. When these are considered along with the direct statements of a resurrection, they will be more than sufficient to show that McFall is fighting windmills in a vain attempt to prove that the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament was "unique." For now, I just want to advise readers to be careful in accepting without question what biblical apologists say when quoting scholars, because they will often times do what McFall did above to misrepresent what the scholars actually said.

McFall's Article Continues:
After a more mature reflection on what I have just written above, I have decided to retract that sliver of evidence that I granted Mr. Till's argument. Plutarch, writing a few thousand years after Osiris' death (note: the New Testament was composed within a hundred years of Christ's death), doesn't explicitly affirm that the followers of Osiris believed that he had bodily resurrected. The implication is that Mr. Till's alleged comparison has overstepped the content available from Plutarch.

Till's Reply:
I suppose McFall intended us to swoon with awe over his reminder that the New Testament was composed within a hundred years of Christ's death, but any sensible person will realize that a period of 100 years in a time when there were no libraries or archives to consult should cause suspicion about how accurate New Testament "history" is.  First of all, McFall assumes the historicity of Jesus, which isn't a point I am willing to concede, but if Jesus wasn't an actual historical person, it wouldn't matter when the New Testament was written. For the sake of argument, however, let's just assume that he did exist and that the New Testament was written within 100 years of his death. If there were no media archives or public libraries existing today, how accurate do you suppose it would be if I should undertake to write a history of the Spanish-American War and had no sources to use except oral traditions and a few handwritten letters from veterans that may have survived the passing of decades? McFall should catch the drift of my question, but if he wants me to explain it to him, I will.

Yes, as I noted above, McFall is right in saying that Plutarch didn't "explicitly affirm that the followers of Osiris believed that he had bodily resurrected," but I did show that the reference to the "revivification" of Osiris all but stated outright that he had returned from the dead.  I also showed that McFall is not above quoting selectively in order to distort what scholars have said on this subject, and I will now show from McFall's favorite scholar that some versions of the Osiris myth did either explicitly state a bodily resurrection or else stated by necessary implication that such a resurrection had occurred. As I will show later, McFall already knows this, because on the Errancy list, Tim Taylor took him to the woodshed on this very issue and posted quotations from Budge that McFall has yet to answer. He is now going to confront some of those same quotations, so it is going to be hard for him to continue his evasion of them.

First, Budge's book Osiris & the Egyptian Resurrection, which McFall has cited several times, reproduced the bas-reliefs in Egyptian temples that depicted Osiris rising from his funeral bier to stand upright. Page 46 (volume 1) shows Osiris at a 45 degree angle during his rising. Page 40 (volume 2) depicts a scene from a bas-relief at Denderah in which the rising of Osiris from his bier, at the command of Horus, is in an earlier stage, so the angle of the body is lower than 45 degrees. Page 43 (volume 2) in another Denderah reproduction depicts Osiris standing on his knees in a still higher degree of resurrection from his bier. Page 58 (volume 1) has a reproduction of a bas-relief at Philae in which Osiris is in an upright position between the outstretched wings of Isis, so as Frazer said in the passage I previously quoted, "The resurrection of the god could hardly be portrayed more graphically" (The Golden Bough, chapter 39, section 2, paragraph 6).

In the preface of his book, Wallis Budge said that "for all [Egyptians] there was only the same hope, and that hope was Osiris" (volume 1, p. xxi). He then went on to say that "Osiris the god became this hope because he had lived in a body which had suffered, and died, and had been mutilated, and had, after reconstitution, been raised from the dead by the god incarnate in it, and had passed into heaven." When I read this, I wondered how McFall could read it and not immediately see "observable parallels" between the resurrections of Osiris and Jesus. I thought of such passages as these.

John 1:14 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.

Philippians 2:5-8 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross.

1 Peter 2:21-24 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.

1 Corinthians 15:13-19 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ--whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

I assume it isn't necessary to quote scriptures that speak of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, because these are well known incidents claimed in the New Testament. Overall, then, the "observable parallels" in the Egyptian and New Testament resurrection myths would be (1) a god was incarnated in a human body, (2) that body was mutilated, (3) the god-man was resurrected from the dead, and (4) the god-man ascended into heaven. McFall can quibble over many differences in the two stories, but such quibbling would be comparable to arguing that Sherlock Holmes was a unique character in English literature, because Holmes did not parallel in all details the super detective who had preceded him in the stories by Edgar Allan Poe.

Budge's book contains many reproductions of temple hieroglyphics followed by translations of the texts and Budge's own comments. After a long hieroglyphic reproduction from "the texts of Teta and Mer-en-Ra," Budge made the following comment after his translation of the text.

From the above passage it is clear that Horus did not only collect and reunite the flesh and bones of Osiris, but that he made him once more a complete man, endowed with all his members. Having done this, it was necessary to restore to Osiris the power to breathe, to speak, to see, to walk, and to employ his body in any way he saw fit. To bring about this result Horus performed a number of ceremonies, and made use of several words of power which had the effect of "opening the mouth" of Osiris (volume 1, p. 74).

Budge cited a passage from another text that gave more details on the opening of Osiris's mouth, which Horus "did with his little finger wherewith he opened the mouth of his father Osiris." Budge explained that during the work of "reconstituting the body of Osiris," Horus was helped by the goddesses Isis and Nephthys. After the body had been reconstructed and revivified, Osiris was ready to ascend into heaven. Budge translated a passage from the text of Pepi II (p. 75) and then made the following comment on the ascension.

With the assistance of Horus and Set, Osiris stood on the ladder, and with their help he ascended and entered heaven. "Every spirit and every god opened his hand to Pepi when he was on the ladder," and the "Lord of the Ladder," helped him with his two fingers to ascend, and according to a passage in the text of Pepi I, when Osiris ascended the ladder, he "was covered with the covering of Horus, he wore the apparel of Thoth, Isis was in front of Him, Nephthys was behind him, Ap-uat opened the way for him, Shu bore him up, the Souls of An drew him up the steps of the ladder, and Nut gave him her hands" (vol. 1, pp. 76-77).

McFall is familiar with all this, because Tim Taylor quoted it in an Internet reply on 3/16/02, and McFall has yet to respond to it.

Are the resurrection accounts of Jesus different from these descriptions of Osiris's resurrection? You bet they are, but there are differences in the literary character Sherlock Holmes and Poe's Auguste Dupin, and there were differences in the tales of Moses' and Sargon's salvation in reed arks. The parallels, however, are striking enough that any reasonable person would recognize that the later stories were spin-offs of the earlier ones.

In our Internet exchanges, McFall challenged me to show that Egyptian mythology had put Osiris on earth for even as much as one second after his "revivification." If McFall won't concede that I have now done that, I would like for him to explain how the body of Osiris could have been "revivified" and made to stand up and then ascend into heaven on a ladder without having been on earth after the "revivification."

Furthermore, in some versions of the myth, Osiris impregnated Isis with their son Horus afterthe body of Osiris was reconstituted and revivified. How did this occur  unless there had been a mysterious "poof" that had caused the body of Osiris to vanish and reappear in heaven at the very moment of revivification?  If McFall is going to claim that this is what happened, then he should tell us how the impregnation of Isis occurred. Did Isis go into the next world to copulate with Osiris and then return to this world? There are some problems here that McFall needs to explain. If he is going to stick to his claim that the resurrection of Osiris occurred in the nether world and not on this earth, he needs to explain how Isis was impregnated and how Osiris ascended to heaven on a ladder without being alive again on earth for at least a time.

McFall's Article Continues:
In the past, Mr. Till has tried to counter the present writer's conclusions by stating that Osiris was "resurrect[ed] back to earth long enough for Osiris to instruct his son Horus in the art of war and to urge him to avenge the death of his father on Set...After this, Osiris descended into the world of the dead" (Errancy, 2/21/01, 3/3/01). However, Plutarch said in no uncertain terms that "Osiris came to Horus from the other world and exercised and trained him for the battle" (De Iside Et Osiride, 358B). In other words, Plutarch's summation shows us that Osiris came from the land of the dead referred to as "the other world" (duat), and taught Horus on the art of war.

Till's Reply:
How many times will I have to remind McFall of the diversity and variation in the various accounts of Osiris's resurrection? Plutarch's account was just one of those variations, so what Plutarch said doesn't necessarily mean that all versions of the myth agreed with him. As I noted in an earlier quotation from Wallis Budge's work, which McFall has quoted extensively, we are dealing with a mythology that had a wide range of variations and even outright contradictions, because nothing was ever thrown away in Egyptian mythology. The fact that Plutarch may have said thus and so about Osiris and Horus does not mean that allversions of the myth said the same thing. I don't think McFall yet understands the unenviable position he is in. To sustain a point on anything we are now arguing, whether the circumstances of Osiris's resurrection or the circumstances of the conception or death of Horus, McFall must show that no versions of mythology deviated from what he is claiming. I, on the other hand, have only to show that some versions of a particular myth support what I am claiming. If I can show that even one version presented the view I am defending, I will have made my case even if all other versions disagree with my claim.

I will show later that whether Osiris taught Horus the art of war before or after his ascension into the other world doesn't really matter, because either version would have put Osiris bodily on earth after his "revivification," but first I want to point out that McFall's favorite Egyptologist didn't think too much of Plutarch's understanding of Egyptian mythology. On the same page that McFall quoted above, Budge said this about Plutarch's narratives on Egyptian mythology.

The narratives of Plutarch and Diodorus contain a great many statements about Osiris and Isis which can be substantiated by texts written three thousand years before the Christian Era, but they are arranged in wrong order, and many of them are joined together in such a way that it is certain that neither the classical writers nor their informants understood the original form of the history of Osiris (Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, vol. 1, pp. 17-18).

If he is going to rely so heavily on what Wallis Budge thought about the Osiris myth, McFall should at least give some consideration to Budge's opinion of the accuracy of Plutarch's and Diodorus's versions of the myth.

McFall's Article Continues"
According to Budge, the IVth Salier papyrus implies that this meeting had mythical overtones because Horus (on the advice of Osiris) changed himself into a bear for combatal reasons. But, Mr. Till, however, would have us believe something else. Why? Because The Resurrection Of Osiris According To Farrell Till depends on it. Mr. Till has formulated a resurrection concept similar to that of Jesus Christ by having the dead Osiris rise from the bier he was lying on, to go on to teach the art of war to Horus, to then ultimately descend "into the world of the dead."

Till's Reply:
Correction please! I did not "have" the dead Osiris rise from the bier he was lying on; the bas-reliefs and hieroglyphics in ancient Egyptian temples so depicted the resurrection of Osiris. In my first reply to McFall, I quoted where George Frazer said in The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion that those depictions graphically portrayed the resurrection of Osiris, and what I have quoted above from McFall's favorite scholar (Wallis Budge) shows that he also understood them to mean the same thing. The body of Osiris was "reconstituted" and revived, after which the resurrected body ascended into heaven on a ladder. How could this resurrection and ascension have been completed without the "revivified" body of Osiris having been on earth for a time? That time, of course, was not as long as the 40 days that the New Testament claims that the resurrected Jesus remained on earth, but I have never said that it was. I have argued only that the parallels in the two resurrection accounts are such that no reasonable person can deny that the latter was either borrowed from the former or from other pagan myths of resurrections that had preceded Christianity. There is just nothing "unique" or original about the Christian claim of a resurrected savior-god.

As for when Osiris "appeared" to Horus, it doesn't really matter if the appearance happened before or after Osiris's ascension into heaven, because McFall has made a great deal over Budge's remark about the Egyptian belief that "life in the next world was but a continuation of the life upon earth" (The Book of the Dead, Papyrus of Ani, p. lxxviii). Presumably, McFall is claiming that the body of Osiris was reconstituted to be full and complete as it was when he was alive but that at the moment of its revivification, the body vanished with a "poof" and reappeared in the next world. If that is what he is claiming, then Osiris in the next world was in the same bodily form as he was on earth, so if he later appeared to Horus to teach him the arts of war, that would have been an appearance on earth in the same body Osiris had had on earth. If not, why not?

I'll have still more to say about this later.

McFall's Article Continues:
All of which implies that Osiris bodily rose from the dead. But, Plutarch says the complete opposite of what Mr. Till says he said.

Till's Reply:
Once again, I will remind McFall that Plutarch cannot be considered a final word in what happened in Egyptian mythology, because he did not cover all versions of a particular myth. These myths were hopelessly contradictory, for reasons already noticed, so if McFall relies on just one version of a myth to support his case, he is playing a "smorgasbord" game to pick and choose what appeals to him but leave unmentioned any version of the myth that damages his case. All of my quotations from Budge above show that his translations of temple hieroglyphics confirm that some versions of the Osiris myth and some temple bas-reliefs depicted a bodily resurrection of Osiris, which was then followed by ascension into heaven on a ladder. How could this ascension have happened unless Osiris was bodily on earth for at least a period of time?

McFall's Article Continues:
As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Till's parallels made plausible by selective descriptions evaporate when they are confronted with the original text.

Till's Reply:
Then perhaps McFall would like to make Budge's translations of original texts evaporate. I suggest that he begin by explaining how the reconstitution, revivification, and ascension of the body of Osiris, could have happened as Budge's translations of Egyptian texts described unless the body was on earth for a time. And let's not forget that in some versions of the myth, Osiris impregnated Isis after he was reconstituted and revivified. How could this have happened unless Osiris was alive on earth for a time after he was "revivified"?

McFall's Articles Continues:
By way of interest, in The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, which Mr. Till made reference to in his essay, its writer, George Frazer, says that when "Isis fanned the cold clay with her wings: Osiris revived, and thenceforth reigned as king over the dead in the other world" (Ch. 38, Section 9).

Till's Reply:
Well, let's just apply a popular biblicist argument to what McFall is attempting to do here. Was it Frazer's intention to include every detail in his summation of what happened? If he omitted a detail, would that omission constitute error? Could Frazer's summation not be essentially correct even though he obviously did omit an important detail? For example, he said nothing about the ascension into the other world on a ladder, which is a detail of the myth that Budge discussed at great length in his book on Egyptian resurrection. Would I be incorrect if I revised Frazer's statement to read, "Isis fanned the cold clay with her wings, Osiris revived, impregnated Isis, ascended into the other world on a ladder, and thenceforth reigned as king over the dead in the other world"? I contend that this would be a correct statement, which included more details than Frazer did, for as the quotations from Budge showed, the ascension of Osiris on a ladder was a part of the resurrection myth, and as some bas-reliefs show, the revivified Osiris impregnated Isis. How could this resurrection, impregnation, and ascension have occurred unless the revivified body of Osiris was on earth for at least a short period of time?

Another matter that McFall should address is whether the "revivification" of Osiris occurred on earth or in the other world. Frazer said that the cold clay wings of Isis fanned the air and Osiris revivified, so what happened at the moment of revivification? Did the body just disappear with a "poof" and then reappear in the world of the dead? Budge's translations from Egyptian texts say no. After the revivification of his body, Osiris ascended into heaven on a ladder.

McFall's Article Continues:
Here, we find that there is no mention of Osiris' discussion with Horus on the art of war in the interval between Osiris' resurrection and his descent into the other world which would imply that he resurrected back to earth. The story is just not told in the sequence that Mr. Till asserts as even his own sources indicate.

Till's Reply:
The easiest way to reply to this would be to quote to McFall what Tim Taylor posted on the Errancy list (6/13/01).

"But of all Osiris' members, Isis could never find out his private part, for it had been presently flung into the River Nilus, and the Carp, Sea-bream, and Pike eating of it were for that reason more scrupulously avoided by them than any other fish. But Isis, in lieu of it, made its effigies and so consecrated the phallus (it being a resemblance of it) for which the Egyptians, to this day, observe a festival. After this, Osiris, coming out of hell to assist his son Orus [Horus], first labored and trained him up in the discipline of war and then questioned him what he thought to be a gallant thing a man could do, to which he soon replied to avenge one's Father and Mother's quarrel when they suffer injury.... These then are most of the heads of this fabulous narration, the more harsh and course parts (such as the description of Orus and the beheading of Isis) being taken out. If therefore they say and believe such things as these of the blessed and incorruptible nature as really thus done and happening to it, I need not tell you that you ought to spit"* (Plutarch's Morals, Vol. 4. Second Edition, printed by Tho. Braddyll, emphasis added).  

* Translator's footnote: "These stories, (however since refined upon) were literally believed in the more ancient and ruder time."

Earlier, McFall, in replying to my quotations from the Book of the Dead in which references were made to the flesh and bones of Osiris "decaying not" and "going forth," emphasized that his favorite Egyptologist, Wallis Budge, had said that to the Egyptians "the life in the next world was but a continuation of the life upon earth, which it resembled closely" (The Skeptical Review, November/December 2001, p. 5).  In other words, the Egyptians believed that the reassembling of the body of Osiris had been important in that this body was needed for the life to which he was "revivified" in the next world.   If this was the Egyptian belief, then the return of Osiris from hell would have been a bodily return, because the next life was like the earthly life.  Furthermore, this part of the Osiris myth sounds very much like the Christian belief that "Peter" described in 1 Peter 3:18ff.

18For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, 19by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, 20who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.

In other words, Jesus died in the Christian myth, went into the next world, preached to the spirits in prison, and then returned to earth.  Osiris died, went into the next world, and returned to earth to "preach" to his son Horus.  This isn't an exact parallel, of course, but striking parallels are nevertheless "observable."  Whether before his entry into the next world or afterwards, one way or the other, the Osiris myth, in some of its versions, had the resurrected Osiris on earth at least for a time.

McFall's Article Continues:
Since Mr. Till has also cited Diodorus (writing career: 60-30 BC) as another one of his sources that would affirm a bodily resurrected Osiris, a consideration of that evidence is warranted here as well. Diodorus relates two different tales of Osiris death and resurrection. First, Diodorus writes:

"Some explain the origin of the honour accorded this bull in this way, saying at the death of Osiris his soul passed into this animal [Apis], and therefore up to this day has always passed into its successors at the times of the manifestation of Osiris; but some say that when Osiris died at the hands of Typhon Isis collected the members of his body and put them in an ox [sic] (bous), made of wood covered over with fine linen, and because of this the city was called Bousiris. Many other stories are told about the Apis, but we feel that it would be a long task to recount all the details regarding them." (Book 1, Chapter 85, pp. 291-93); see Diodorus Siculus I, Books I-II.34, Loeb Classical Library (279), Translated by C.H. Oldfather. Harvard University Press Cambridge Mass., London, England ISBN 0-674-99307-1. Source provided by Tim Taylor, Errancy list, 6/30/01)

Who or what is Apis? In Egyptian mythology, Apis (a sacred icon of a black bull with white markings), came to be identified with Osiris. According to Plutarch, "most of the [Egyptian] priests...regard[ed] Apis as the bodily image of the soul of Osiris" (De Iside Et Osiride, 362D, 368B-D). Do readers find a parallel here? In the opinion of the present writer, there's simply no connection between the two concepts, and, the mythical overtones from this source are immediately apparent.

Till's Reply:
Oh, well, if in the opinion of "this writer" [McFall], "there's simply no connection between the two concepts," then I suppose that settles it.  I'm sure, however, if I said that in my opinion, mythical overtones are immediately apparent in the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth to make it simply another version of a myth that dates back at least to Osiris, the "revivified" Egyptian deity, McFall wouldn't see that as much proof.  He will excuse me, then, if I don't see his opinion as much proof either.  I've quoted above from the writings of McFall's favorite Egyptologist [Wallis Budge], where he translated temple inscriptions that spoke of Osiris's ascension into the next world on a ladder after he had been "revivified."  McFall needs to explain to us how this ascension could have occurred unless Osiris was bodily on earth at least for a time.  In some versions of the myth, Osiris impregnated Isis after his "revivification."  How was that done unless the resurrected Osiris remained on earth at least long enough for a "quickie"?

At any rate, I will call the readers' attention back to my earlier comments about McFall's call for me to identify "observable parallels" between the Osiris myth and the New Testament claim of Jesus's resurrection.  I pointed out that in both stories or tales or whatever McFall wishes to call them, a man died and returned to life, and that is about as observable a "parallel" as one could expect to find.  What does it matter if a virgin-birth myth depicted the human female being impregnated by a sunbeam or a breeze or a swan or by the Holy Spirit "overshadowing" the woman? The end result is the same.  A human virgin gave birth to a child whose father was a god.  To argue in such cases that there are no "observable parallels" in these stories and the conception and birth of Jesus because all details in the stories aren't exactly parallel (the names of the virgins were different, the divine methods used to bring about the conception were different, the names of the children born to the virgins were different, etc.) is a flagrant resort to quibbling in order to protect a cherished belief, because the mere concept of a human birth that occurred without the participation of a human male is itself the most "observable parallel" that one could ask for.  So it is with the resurrections of Osiris and Jesus.  The fact that both are tales of men who died and returned to life is a "parallel" that strips the resurrection of Jesus of any right to claim "uniqueness."

McFall's Article Continues:
Perhaps, however, Mr. Till sees a bodily resurrection in the other belief that Diodorus relates concerning Osiris' resurrection. Diodorus writes:

"But the Egyptians offer another explanation for the honor accorded this animal, although it pertains more to the realm of myth; for they say that in early times when Isis, aided by her son Horus, was about to commence her struggle with Tryphon, Osiris came from Hades to help his son and his wife, having taken on the guise of a wolf; and so, upon the death of Tryphon, his conquerors commanded men to honor the animal [the wolf] upon whose appearance the victory followed" (Book 1, Chapter 88, pp. 301-303).

It appears that Osiris reanimated into a wolf in this account. Is Mr. Till interpreting a parallel here between the bodily resurrected Christ, and the bodily resurrected "wolf?" If so, this similarity seems a bit far fetched. In my view, Mr. Till's ability to confidently assert a meaningful parallel has been compromised by the use of this source (this does not mean that I am questioning Mr. Till's honesty). In any case, in the primary documents that report Christ's post-resurrection appearances, he always appears in human form.

Till's Reply:
These so-called "primary documents" that McFall referred to reported a Jesus who at times appeared to materialize out of nothing.

Luke 24:32 And they said to one another, "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?" 33So they rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, 34saying, "The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!" 35And they told about the things that had happened on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of bread.

36Now as they said these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them, "Peace to you." 37But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit. 38And He said to them, "Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have."

The last verse quoted spoke of the flesh and bones of Jesus, but Jesus's apparent appearance out of nowhere wouldn't exactly be something that a physical body could do.  The tale in Luke went on to say that Jesus then "vanished out of their sight" (v:31), which likewise would not have been something that a human body could have done.

The Marcan appendix makes an apparent reference to this story in Luke and refers to it as a "manifestation" that occurred while the eleven were sitting to eat (Mark 16:14).  The verses prior to this claimed that Jesus appeared "in another form" to two who were walking in the country (v:12), and John 20:19 refers to an appearance that Jesus made to the disciples in a room that had had all of the doors shut for fear of the Jews.  The next chapter of John referred to another "manifestation" that Jesus made to the disciples by the sea of Tiberias (v:1).  The way these "appearances" and "manifestations" were described, they hardly seemed to be cases of a physical body walking up to people and appearing to them through ordinary means. 

If McFall wants to contend that Osiris' appearance as a wolf after his ascension to the netherworld is unlike anything in the Jesus myth, and so that makes the Osiris myth too different to be "parallel" to the "unique" story of Jesus's resurrection, maybe he will want to reconsider that opinion.  After his ascension, Jesus allegedly made an "appearance" to the apostle Paul, which was not a bodily appearance, because (1) the men who were with Paul heard a voice and saw a light but didn't see Jesus [Acts 9:7; 20:9], and (2) Paul referred to this appearance as a "vision" [Acts 26:19].  In one myth, a man returned to life, ascended into the next world, and made an earthly reappearance as a wolf; in the other, a man returned to life, ascended, and then returned to earth as a "vision." 

McFall sees no "observable parallels" in this?  If not, perhaps it is because he doesn't want to see any observable parallels.

McFall's Article Continues:
As we turn now to The Book Of The Dead, otherwise known as The Book Of Going Forth By Day. This 3,500 year old piece of ancient literature signified to the Egyptians the soul emerging into the restorative rays of the sun's light after a nighttime in the underworld. Its purpose seems not to be for the intention of setting forth basic tenants of Egyptian religion or religious guides, but, rather, to assist its reader into the afterlife of the underworld (duat). Hence, unlike Islam, Judaism, and of course Christianity, The Book of the Dead was not consider [sic] an authoritative text for its readers. Nevertheless, it is in Plate 33 translated by the Egyptologist Dr. Raymond Faulkner where we read these words attributed to the goddess Isis as she hovered over the dead Egyptian King Osiris:

"I have come that I may be your protection. I fan air at your nostrils for you, I fan the north wind which comes forth from Atum for your nose. I clear your windpipe for you. I cause you to be a god with your enemies fallen under you sandals. May you be vindicated in the sky and may your flesh be powerful among the gods" (BD, Plate 33).

Besides the fact that this is the only Plate that alludes to Osiris' reanimation in the 37 plates that make up the main corpus of The Book Of The Dead, this text, gives the impression that Isis spoke those words over the body of Osiris and hoped for the best. Isis' expression: "may you be vindicated in the sky and may your flesh be powerful among the gods," seems to bare [sic] that out. Again, here we see more "allusions" to Osiris' afterlife, but still no reported resurrection appearances. According to Dr. Ogden Goelet, a contemporary non-Christian Egyptologist of high regard, and author of, A Commentary on the Corpus of Literature and Tradition which Constitutes The Book of Going Forth by Day, says that it's "an allusion to the legend of Osiris wherein these gods protected and revived Osiris after he had died" (pg. 168). Dr. Goelet explains it this way:

"When Osiris comes back to life, however, he never returns to the land of the living, but remains in the Underworld, the Duat, where he rules as King of Eternity and supreme judge of the dead. His resurrection was limited to the next world and so he passed on the rights of kingship to his son and avenger, Horus" (Goelet, A Commentary on the Corpus of Literature and Tradition which Constitues [sic] The Book of Going Forth by Day, pg. 149).

Till's Reply:
Different variations of the myth were discussed in the broader context of the passage that McFall quoted.

"Throughout the night after his death, both Isis and Nephthy mourned over their brother. Thoth, and frequently Horus, as well, assisted the two goddesses in the revitalization of Osiris. The means for bringing him back to life vary from one version to another."

As quoted earlier, Goelet went on to say...
"This fragmentary narrative cannot do justice to the richness of the Osiris legend, reconstructed from hundreds of allusions scattered through the BD. The order and nature of events, as well as the participants, varies not only from chapter to chapter, but within different sections of some of the longer chapters. Some of these references were derived from moments and places in local Osiris festivals, which varied from place to place in Egypt. However confusing it may seem, we must bear in mind that Egyptian religious texts tend to collect rather than edit; no attempt was made to reconcile contradictions or to form a continuous tale. It is not surprising that the numerous local traditions should have given birth to a wide range of phrases, words, and allusions."

Goelet recognized that the myths contained the idea of living again.

"Once revitalized, he usually appears as Wennefer, an epithet which perhaps means ‘he who is always perfect.'"

McFall's tactic has been to play a "smorgasbord" game in which he picks and chooses from a broad range of Osiris myths the versions that best suit his purpose, but the issue in this debate is what Egyptian mythology said about the resurrection of Osiris.  If some of the myths indicated a bodily resurrection, it doesn't matter if some didn't.  The existence of some myths that depicted a bodily resurrection would have preceded the Christian myth of the resurrection of Jesus, so the Christian myth would not have been "unique."

McFall's Article Continues.
Mr. Till also made several references to Egyptian poems or inscription [sic] to indicate a non-decayed [sic] rejuvenated Osiris body. But as Wallis Budge aptly put it:

"This belief may have rested upon the view that the life in the next word was but a continuation of the life upon earth, which it resembled closely" (Budge, Papyrus of Ani, p. lxxviii)

According to Dr. Goelet, "contrary to a common misconception about the [Egyptian] concept of life after death, the Egyptians neither believed in the transmigration of the soul on earth in the Hindu or Pythagorean manner, nor hoped for a resurrection in this world. Rather, they believed in a transfiguration into the next world. Except in dreams or visions, the dead did not reappear on earth" (Goelet, A Commentary on the Corpus of Literature and Tradition which Constitutes The Book of Going Forth by Day, pg. 151).

Till's Reply:
McFall came back to quote this statement from Budge, which I referred to above to show that his favorite Egyptologist said that ancient Egyptians believed that "the life in the next world was but a continuation of the life on earth."  If that is so, then Osiris had a bodily existence in the next world.  As noted above in the quotation from Plutarch, when Osiris came "out of hell" to teach his son Horus the discipline of warfare, he would have been bodily on earth.  As for the quotation from Goelet above, I will remind readers of what I noted above that Goelet had said in the broader context of his article: "Throughout the night after his death, both Isis and Nephthy mourned over their brother. Thoth, and frequently Horus, as well, assisted the two goddesses in the revitalization of Osiris. The means for bringing him back to life vary from one version to another."  Here Goelet was recognizing that Osiris was resurrected to life through the interventions of Isis and Nephthy but that the way in which this was done was not consistently depicted in all of the myths. However, if Osiris was "revivified" through the labors of Isis and Nephthy, then his "revivification" necessarily took place on earth, unless McFall wants to argue that Isis and Nephthy took the body of Osiris into the next world and worked there to bring it back to life.

As for Goelet's quotation immediately above, it referred to the belief that Egyptians had concerning the deaths of people in general and wasn't even referring to the resurrection of Osiris.  In other words, the Egyptians didn't seem to believe that they would be resurrected in this world.  That belief, however, would not remove the fact that Budge clearly showed that some versions of the Osiris myth depicted his resurrection on earth, at least for a brief time, before he ascended into heaven.  In other words, Egyptians didn't believe that the general population would be resurrected to earth, but that would not say anything at all about what they believed about the specific resurrection of Osiris, who in their mythology was the first to rise from the dead to give them hope that they would live again in the next world.

Somehow I suspect that if versions of the Osiris myth were discovered that said that Osiris rose bodily from the dead and remained on earth 10 days before he ascended into heaven, McFall would argue that there would be no "observable parallel" in this to the resurrection of Jesus because he had remained on earth for 40, not 10, days.  This is the kind of nitpicking that the Ronald Nashes of biblicism engage in to deny that Christianity borrowed some of its ideas from previous religious beliefs.

McFall's Article Continues:
This leaves us with Mr. Till's most recent appeal to the Egyptian poem The Book of the Breaths of Life (521 BC), where, we find priestly recitals in mortuary literature concerning the non-decayed [sic] rejuvenated body of Osiris (as mentioned earlier). However, these recitals were just that--recitals. There is no tradition that has come down to us that suggests that these priests (or anybody else for that matter) saw Osiris resurrected. In fact, Dr. Goelet, specifically says of these inscriptions that contain phrases similar to what Mr. Till has appealed to, that:

"Throughout Egyptian religious history such denials of death were a constant them[e] in mortuary literature. As in many other cultures, the Egyptian dead would be treated as if they were merely in a deep sleep and needed to awaken and go about their business. In the Book of the Dead the denial of death appears mostly in the form of euphemism." (Goelet, A Commentary on the Corpus of Literature and Tradition which Constitutes The Book of Going Forth by Day, pg. 150)

These euphemisms according to Dr. Goelet (i. e. "Rise up thou, O Osiris, Thou hast thy backbone" etc..), present the idea of not speaking ill of the dead. Dr. Goelet tells us that to be called dead in Egyptian literature implies a damned or unhappy state of death. The Egyptians felt that by reciting Pyramid Texts or Coffin Texts that reflect a rejuvenated Osiris, they would be avoiding death's power over them. This same type of euphemism is present in today's world with expressions that refer to the dead as: "the departed" or "passed away" (etc..). This insight from the distinguished Egyptologist, Dr. Goelet, provides a perspective not considered by Mr. Till.

Till's Reply:
If Goelet indeed understood the expressions in this way, it would have been nice if McFall had told us Goelet's rationale for seeing this kind of euphemistic meanings in the expressions referred to, which, incidentally, occurred throughout the Book of the Dead.  They were funereal incantations recited over mummies.  I can certainly see that they intended to convey that the mummified person had hope of living again through Osiris, who had risen from the dead, just as funerals in Christian societies will refer to the resurrection of Jesus in order to convey hope for the person who has died.  In fact, the quotation from Goelet that McFall cited seems to be saying exactly that: the expressions in question were "denials of death."  However, I see nothing in the quotation to indicate that Goelet thought that such expressions were just euphemisms for death.  People in our society who don't wish to face reality will often say something like, "John passed away," instead of just saying, "John died."  When a preacher, however, is conducting John's funeral and reads John 11:25-26, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live.  And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die," he is not just euphemistically saying, "John died."  He is instead saying that John has hope through the resurrection of Jesus of living again.  The funereal incantations from the Book of the Dead, which referred to the "nondecayed flesh and bones" of Osiris were used to express the same hope.

Goelet has said nothing in this quotation that disputes Budge's translations of temple inscriptions that referred to the reconstruction, resurrection, and ascension of Osiris.

McFall's Article Continues:
In light of the preceding sections, it appears that not only is the present writer's position (i.e. that Osiris did NOT resurrect back to earth according to the myth) backed with heavy scholarly (non-Christian) weight, but more importantly [sic], it is also backed by observations from original texts.

Till's Reply:
It may have seemed that way to McFall when he wrote this article, but I have shown through quotations from his own non-Christian scholars that in the wide diversity of Osiris myths there were allusions to a resurrection that could only be considered a bodily resurrection on earth for at least a brief period of time.

As I was wading through McFall's futile attempt to prove the "uniqueness" of the Christian resurrection myth by denying that the Osiris myths had alluded to bodily resurrection, I wondered what he hoped to prove even if he could establish that Osiris died and then was "revivified" in the next world but not on earth.  Even if he could prove this premise, he would still be left with other pagan resurrection myths that he would have to disprove also.  McFall writes in his paper In the Word, as if no one has ever refuted his attempts to prove the "uniqueness" of the resurrection of Jesus, but those of us familiar with his activities through internet contacts know better.  On 3/16/02, Tim Taylor posted the following references that the early church writer Origen made to other resurrection myths that he was aware of in his time.

"But since the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a subject of mockery to unbelievers, we shall quote the words of Plato, that Erus the son of Armenius rose from the funeral pile twelve days after he had been laid upon it, and gave an account of what he had seen in Hades; and as we are replying to unbelievers, it will not be altogether useless to refer in this place to what Heraclides relates respecting the woman who was deprived of life. And many persons are recorded to have risen from their tombs, not only on the day of their burial, but also on the day following" (Origen, Contra Celsus, Book 2, Chapter 16, emphasis added).

To my knowledge, McFall has never replied to this, but it clearly indicates that an early "church father" knew that the Christian claim of Jesus's resurrection was by no means unique, as McFall is now claiming centuries later.  If, therefore, we grant McFall his quibbles about differences in "revivification" or "rejuvenation" and "resurrection" in the matter of the Osiris myths, he would still have to explain away the various other pagan resurrections myths.

At this point in his article, McFall turned to "literary evidence for Jesus Christ's resurrection," which I intend to reply to in a separate article.  However, at the end of his article, McFall returned to Egyptian mythology and tried to prove that the myths did not teach that Horus, the son of Osiris, rose from the dead, so I will include that brief section in this reply.

McFall's Article Continues:
Horus: Mr. Till said that a response to my article would not be complete without mentioning Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, who later became a god himself. I am not sure why this argument appeared so late in his response; perhaps it was a comparison being newly realized on the spot?

Till's Reply:
It's purpose was to make the same point that I am now discussing.  Even if McFall could establish--and he can't--that no versions of the Osiris myth depicted a bodily resurrection to earth, that would not help his case, because Egyptian mythology is clear in depicting Horus's return to life, after which he reigned on earth for several years.

McFall's Article Continues:
In any case, as Mr. Till noted, in some of the versions that relate this tale, Horus drowns, and, in others he is stung (her tchetem-f) by a scorpion. Either way, Mr. Till's point, was, that there is no way that I can deny the parallel of a bodily resurrected Horus. Umm, shall we look at more ancient texts?  In the scorpion version, it is unclear if Horus was even dead. According to the ancient Egyptian text known as the Sorrows of Isis (dated well into the BC era) translated by Wallis Budge, we read, that, "Isis placed her nose in his mouth to know (her rekh) if [he] had breath." The text does not report what Isis learned from this, nevertheless, the text goes on to relate that through the night "Horus heal[ed]" (senb Heru). This is simply all the original text explicitly relates.

[At this point, McFall included footnote 8, which is quoted below.]

The late and respected skeptic, Joseph Crea, tried to counter my claim by pointing out an obscure word atet-f in the Sorrows of Isis which Budge translated as "nothing" (Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, Vol. II, pg. 238) as a possible "synonym for dead/death" (Errancy, 7/03/01). However, in my opinion, the overall context excludes this possibility because "Horus heal[ed]" (senb Heru) through the night. Whatever may be the case, the language of the entire text is difficult to read, follow, and comprehend. The only thing that is certain, is that Frazer's description of Horus' resurrection is clearly an embellishment. The text simply doesn't have the clarity and intensity implied by that prolific skeptical writer.

Till's Reply:
Well, of course, we would expect McFall's opinion to be that "the overall context excludes this possibility," i. e., that atet-f was a synonym for dead or death, because McFall has an emotionally important belief to protect.  Because of the excellent job that Tim Taylor did replying on the Internet to McFall's many quibbles and rationalizations on the Osiris myth, my work can be simplified by just quoting from Taylor's work what McFall has yet to refute.  On 3/16/02, Taylor posted the following quotation from Diodorus, whose work on Egyptian mythology McFall quoted in the article I am now replying to.

"There in the papyrus she [Isis] brought forth Horus, and there she [left him] unknown to anyone. During her absence one scorpion stung the child, and he died. When Isis returned and found Horus lying dead, she rent with her cries of grief, and made bitter lament. Her sister Nephthys appeared, and made so fervent an appeal to the god in the Boat of Millions of Years, the Boat stopped, and Thoth came down and provided Isis with the words of power which restored Horus to life" (Book 1, page 96, emphasis added).

The text here is rather clear in stating that Horus died, lay dead, and was restored to life.  These expressions hardly denote the resuscitation that McFall has tried to distort this into.

There is even a biblical example that I can cite to show that the act of Isis in putting her nose to the mouth of Horus to see if he had breath was not without parallel.

2 Kings 4:33 When Elisha came into the house, there was the child, lying dead on his bed. 33He went in therefore, shut the door behind the two of them, and prayed to Yahweh. 34And he went up and lay on the child, and put his mouth on his mouth, his eyes on his eyes, and his hands on his hands; and he stretched himself out on the child, and the flesh of the child became warm.

This is the case of the Shunammite woman's son, whom Elisha resurrected from the dead.  I am sure that McFall would have no problem accepting this as a genuine, rootin' tootin' resurrection, because the biblical text plainly said that the child was lying dead on his bed.  However, if the myth of Horus's resurrection had depicted Isis as lying on her son and putting her mouth to his mouth, McFall would say, "Aha, this was not a case of resurrection but only of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."  The Egyptian myth, however, made two references to Horus's death and one to his restoration to life.  According to the myths, then, Horus died, returned to life, and reigned on earth for many years.

Why then does McFall consider the resurrection of Jesus "unique"?

McFall's Article Continues:
This is far different from Mr. Till's embellished quote from George Frazer (1851-1941) that Isis "uttered the words of power, and straightway the poison flowed from the body of Horus, air passed into him, and he lived."

Till's Reply:
Well, of course, what McFall tried to twist The Sorrows of Isis into meaning is quite different from Frazer's account, but the version as recorded by Diodorus is clearly in agreement with Frazer.  A scorpion bit Horus, and he died.  When Isis found Horus lying dead, she broke into such a lament that her sister appeared, entreated the gods, and Thoth came down to provide Isis with the "words of power" that restored Horus to life.  The language here is too clear to be misunderstood, but I have no illusions that McFall will admit what the language clearly says.  He has an emotionally important belief to protect.

McFall's Article Continues:
Can readers see the point I'm try to make about unsubstantiated presentments?

Till's Reply:
I'm sure readers can see the unsubstantiated "presentments" that McFall is trying to sell them.

McFall's Article Continues:
Unfortunately, Mr. Frazer's work, The Golden Bough, has influenced numerous resources on mythology who's [sic] ideologies many have accepted uncritically.

[At this point, McFall included footnote 8, which is quoted below.]

A similar hyperbole presentment is found in The Facts On File Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend, by Anthony S. Mercatante. Here we read that:

"Isis learned the magic words, and when she uttered them, the poison flowed from her son's body, air entered his lungs, sense and feeling returned to him, and he was restored to life (pg. 347).

Again, however, the text of the Sorrows of Isis doesn't use this type of strong or even suggestive language. Quite interesting...wouldn't you say?

Till's Reply:
By "interesting," I assume that McFall meant that The Sorrows of Isis seems to support his position, but he keeps repeating the same mistake.  He isolates one version of a myth and accepts it as the authoritative version as if nothing in any other account of the same myth warrants consideration. His own "authoritative" version, however, doesn't necessarily prove what he wants it to prove, because I showed above that the act of Isis in putting her nose to Horus's mouth to see if he had breath left in him would not prove that only a resuscitation had happened any more than Elisha's putting his mouth to the mouth of the body in 2 Kings 4:34 would mean that the boy was resuscitated rather than resurrected to life.  The biblical text said that he was "lying dead" on his bed, so unless the text is errant, the boy was dead.  The source that McFall just quoted ended by saying, "(A)nd he was restored to life."  This makes three different accounts that all indicated that Horus died and was "restored to life."   How could Horus have been "restored to life" unless life had left him?  If life had left his body, he was dead.

McFall's Article Continues:
In the drowning version (which by the way only Diodorus tells), Horus is given a "drug" which gives him immortality. Does this sound like a genuine parallel?

Till‘s Reply:
Whether Diodorus was the only source to depict Horus's death by drowning isn't important enough for me to spend the time verifying, because some versions of Horus's death obviously attributed the death to a scorpion's sting.  McFall, then, is playing his same old game of finding one version of a myth that appeals to him and treating it as if there were no conflicting accounts.  The versions that I have referred to above show that Horus died from a scorpion's sting and was then "restored to life" by the "words of power" that Thoth reveal to Isis.  Hence, we have in Horus an example of a pagan myth in which a man died and then returned to life.  That would be an "observable parallel" to the Christian myth.

McFall asked if this [the death in the version he cited] sounds "like a genuine parallel."  Well, no, the death of Horus, whatever the version of his death was, would not be a "genuine parallel" in the sense that all details or even most details paralleled the Christian myth of the death and resurrection of Jesus, because the Jesus of the Christian myth died neither by drowning nor the sting of a scorpion.  However, the restoration to life of Horus is a "genuine parallel" in the only detail that matters, which is that a man died and was returned to life.  The fact that in the Christian myth, Jesus died in a different way, was buried whereas Horus wasn't, was dead for a longer period of time than Horus was, etc. are details unimportant to the real issue, which is, as I noted above, that in both myths a man died and was returned to life.  There is therefore nothing unique in the central element of the Christian resurrection myth.

McFall's Article Continues:
Or, are heterogeneous elements present here as well?

Till's Reply:
Since I have never argued at any time that there are exact parallels in pagan mythology to all of the details in the Christian resurrection myth, this question is simply a straw man set up to distract attention from the real issue, which is the so-called "uniqueness" of the Christian myth.  If mythologies of other religions depicted demigods who died and returned to life, then that is the only element needed to dispel McFall's claim that the resurrection of Jesus was "unique."  It doesn't matter if the demigods in other myths died by drowning, dismemberment, poison, or whatever, rather than crucifixion.  If they died and returned to life, that is the only homogeneous element necessary to establish that the Christian resurrection myth is not "unique."

McFall's Article Continues:
If not, then perhaps Mr. Till sees the sour wine offered to the crucified Christ as making this connection? If so, that's quite a parallel!

Till's Reply:
McFall is quibbling again.  My comments above explain that I have never at any time maintained that Egyptian mythology contained resurrection tales that were exact parallels to the Christian myth.  I have claimed only that resurrections in pagan mythology were believed long before the time that Jesus was allegedly resurrected.  Hence, there is nothing "unique" about the Christian claim that a savior-god died and lived again.

McFall's Article Continues:
In any event, Diodorus undergirds Horus' resurrection with the mythical characters of the giant "Titans" just like we see in Plutarch's allusion to Osiris' resurrection (incidentally, neither Plutarch nor The Book of the Dead mention Horus' revivification).

Till's Reply:
For the umpteenth time, I will point out that McFall is playing a "smorgasbord" game by singling out versions of the Egyptian myths that best suit his position, but ample evidence has been quoted above from reputable scholars to show that diversity and outright contradictions in different versions of a single myth abounded in Egyptian literature.  Therefore, if some versions of the Osiris myth depicted a bodily resurrection, it doesn't matter if some versions didn't.

McFall's Article Continues:
How do readers view the strength of evidence regarding Horus' resurrection? How does that compare with the evidence surrounding Christ's resurrection? Does the evidence that surrounds Christ's resurrection cause you to take a moment of pause in light of what you know concerning the tales that surround Horus or Osiris?

Till's Reply:
How do I view the "strength of evidence regarding Horus' resurrection"?  It is pretty flimsy, because the very nature of the tale in that it claims a death and subsequent return to life makes it unbelievable.

How does it compare with the evidence surrounding Christ's resurrection?  I have to ask McFall what evidence he is referring to.  Is he referring to the gospel accounts, which were written decades after the alleged event?  If so, that evidence is also flimsy.  Is he referring to the secondhand testimony in those narratives?  If so, that evidence is equally flimsy. I'm sure, of course, that he is not referring to the total absence of any contemporary record of the resurrection tale, which would be the closest thing to real evidence that he could produce, but unfortunately for his superstitious belief, no such records exist.  These are matters that McFall and I can discuss later if he will agree to defend the Christian claim that Jesus of Nazareth was literally dead but then returned to life.

 I will probably touch on much of this so-called evidence in my reply to the part of McFall's article that discussed the "literary evidence" for the resurrection of Jesus.  After that second reply, I would also like to present a third reply that details the arguments and examples in my article that McFall either skipped or touched too superficially to qualify as real rebuttals.
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