Smorgasbord Debating

by Farrell Till

A reply to
OH-SIGH-RIS
The Pagan Origins of Resurrection Refuted!

by Mark McFall

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.

Pagan Origins Of The Resurrection

From *The Skeptical Review*, 2001 / Nov.-Dec.:

by Farrell Till 

I was reluctant to publish an article whose endnotes required an entire page, but the subject of Mark McFall's article is one that skeptics should have some familiarity with in order to understand that many claims about the uniqueness of Christianity are without foundation. The title of McFall's article, when considered in the context of some of his footnotes, betrays the fact that he seemed more interested in catching me in a mistake than in defending his apparent belief that the New Testament doctrine of the bodily resurrection of Jesus was unique. Instead of just discussing the Egyptian myths of Osiris with a view to showing that they did not claim that he had risen bodily from the dead, McFall chose instead to write from the perspective of "The Resurrection of Osiris According to Farrell Till." I was left wondering what he thought he would have accomplished if he had proven that I was dead wrong and that Egyptian mythology had not taught that Osiris was resurrected bodily. Would McFall have then thought that because he had shown Farrell Till to be wrong, he had established that the claim that Jesus had risen bodily from the dead was a unique religious doctrine?