by Mark Smith Plagiarism seems to be an issue often under dispute between Atheists and Christians, though neither side hits this particular nail squarely on the head. Atheists can clearly show the truth of what I once saw on a bumper sticker: Christianity Has Pagan DNA, while Christians can do an extraordinary job of mimicking President Bill Clinton's "Clintonian Logic" to split verbal hairs in an attempt to show that their religion hasn't done an exact 100% Xeroxed-copy rip-off of Paganism. But 100% Xeroxed-copies are not the issue: plagiarism is, and Christianity clearly HAS plagiarized from Paganism.
Plagiarizing From Christianity Looked Down Upon Of course, Christianity seeing nothing wrong with being hypocritical, plagiarizing by Christianity from other religions has been silently tolerated thru the centuries, whereas plagiarizing of Christianity by anybody else is not. For example, in the book “The Kingdom of the Cults1” we read that “a careful examination of the Book of Mormon reveals that it contains thousands of words from the King James Bible.” And in “Mormonism- Shadow or Reality?” we read “the evidence for plagiarism is all too apparent… it is very obvious that the author of the Book of Mormon has borrowed from (The Gospel of) Mark.” What is being charged is NOT that the Mormons have reproduced, 100% word-for-word, the entire King James Bible within the Book of Mormon (that would be mere copying), but rather plagiarizing- sort of like what the Christians did with the Osiris story. They didn’t copy it verbatim, they plagiarized it- that is, they rewrote it a bit, added a few spices of their own, and tried to pass it off as an original recipe. Plagiarism Doesn't Equal Copying Though Christians clearly see when others, such as the Mormons, have plagiarized from them, they have a harder time seeing when their own religion has plagiarized from others. The evidence for this plagiarism has been covered numerous times before by other authors, and won't be dealt with here. (For a short video on the topic, see the link at the bottom). What will be dealt with here is how Christians have reacted to this evidence, i.e. the mis-guided defenses of various Christian apologists. Let's take the issue of resurrections for an example. Their usual defense against charges of plagiarism is not to disprove plagiarism, but rather to disprove the alleged resurrection of Jesus was an exact 100% item-for-item Xeroxed reproduction of previously alleged Pagan resurrections. They seem to think that if they accomplish this- if they can show even one tiny deviation from the original, their religion of choice is off the hook. "Well, you see it's like this: that thar Osiris fella, well, he'um parted his hair on the left, whereas Jesus parted his hair on the right, and that makes all the difference, yesiree Bob." What is missing in their defense is an awareness of the concept of plagiarism. Plagiarism is not always colored in Fundamentalist “black & white” simplicity. Plagiarism does not require a 100% correspondence to be plagiarism. As “Blacks Law Dictionary3” states, “the supporting evidence for the accusation of plagiarism may on occasion be elusive.” And what is the definition of plagiarism but to “take and use the thoughts, writings, inventions etc. of another person as one’s own.4” In other words, plagiarism is a paraphrase, a rewrite, wherein the original source is not acknowledged. In short, attempts to show little piss-ant differences between Pagan resurrections and Christian resurrections does not disprove Christian plagiarism in the least. Atheists don't have to prove Christian “resurrections” are exact Xeroxed copies of Pagan “resurrections” to establish plagiarism, but Christians never seem to notice this point. Showing Christianity isn’t an exact clone of Paganism doesn't disprove charges of plagiarism. There is more than enough evidence to raise the similarities above the level of "amazing coincidences" to the level of plagiarism. The evidence of Christians having plagiarized from Pagan religions clearly shows that Christianity Has Pagan DNA. ************* 1) The Kingdom of the Cults, Walter Martin, Bethany House Pub, Minneapolis, MN, 1997, page 204 2) Mormonism- Shadow or Reality, Jerald & Sandra Tanner, Modern Microfilm Co, Salt Lake City, 1972, p. 74 3) Blacks Law Dictionary, 7th Edition, West Group, St. Paul, MN 1999, p. 1170 4) DK Illustrated Oxford Dictionary, Oxford Univ. Press, NY, NY, 1998 Additional Information:
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