Is Jesus a scarecrow?
 

Sorry if you think that's sacriligeous, but think about it: Lots of religions have agricultural gods and Christianity adopts lots of its iconography. Could the crucifix have been adopted from some scarecrow god?

I hate to be the one to answer this when so many have just left this one alone, but...

...the crucifix was a Roman tool of execution. It was in no way based on a scarecrow. It was based on killing somebody slowly, painfully and with little effort on the part of the executioner.

Christianity certainly borrows a lot of its iconography and festivals from agrarian religions, but not, you will find, the cross itself.

This was a bug DUH...

In fact, the cross used in crucifixion would have been T-shaped, not cross-shaped as Christians assume. The T-shape is much stronger and easier to construct than a cross. Sorry, I thought that was a fairly widely accepted thing these days so I didn't point it out, but that was what started me wondering.

hilarious! I laughed out loud for the first time this week! Well done John Henry . . I can tell your a Brit! But that subtle humour doesn't trave well you know!

John Henry cracks me up. his logic is awesome.

Hey John is kissing mike moores ass tasty, or are you just his asshatter

Interesting.

It made me think that the church leaders could have adopted it as a tactic to scare the unwashed into belief and adoration. (cynical, yes )

This would have been far from what Christ taught and lived, i/e that the poor and uneducated know as much about right and wrong as the elite and truly want to create a better, more fair world.

I think the traditional teachingis valid. That, in dying on the cross Christ sacrificed his own faultlessness to prove to us that we must re invent ourselves casting off our rationalizations of position and accomplishment in favor of a more simple honest existence. The beauty of it all being that, the resultant rebirth, is a greater and more real being.

Of course this parallels the agrarian plowing under of the crops so they may be reborn the next spring.

some believe it wasnt a cross.. or uhhh T at all

some say that... they put tied jesus' hand to a straight piece of plank.. beat him. and had him walk to the crucifixion site.. where the plank he was tied to was nailed onto a tree... and his hands and feet are nailed onto the plank and tree..

and so and so .. and whipped and beat.. and scoffed at.. and finally... speared in the side... then... BOOM... "it is finished"

Hmm, the bible actually says cross, not T.

The bible's been translated alot too so.. can you trust one word?
I'm not sure, but I don't think the cross was even a major symbol until the Crusades.

Jehova's Witnesses say that it was a pole, not a cross or a T. It all depends on who you ask.

What does matter is the idea that it shows what an innocent man would go through for the sake of others.

That I agree with.

The bible I believe in is the KJV Bible, it says cross, so I believe it was a cross. If you're going to debate other wise on interpretations... then I'll jump in.... let's say it was spagetti.

Re: Is Jesus a scarecrow?
 

Well, to prove that Jesus is a scarecrow, you will have to prove the Bible wrong first.

Any way it sounds like an unlikely scenario because it would mean that this Scarecrow moved about and got crucified after ministering the people for 3 years?

Ever see wizard of oz?

that's too dry for my taste John, although nicely reworded :D

I would guess that Jesus was not really crucified on a cross (assuming he existed). The cross is an ancient religious symbol (compare symbols of the sun, or the Ankh) and it probably got mixed up in the story because it had more symbolic power than a pole or a "T."

Whether Jesus existed or not, the crucifix was in use by the Romans as an instrument for capital punishment way before Jesus was supposedly born.

Wizard of Oz has a walking tinman and a talking lion in it.
Which is easier? Proving Wizard of Oz as fictitious or proving the Bible as fictitious?

wizard of oz is about the great depression

being crucified would SUCK, it was used for executions for centuries before jesus (we're talking tens of thousands of people), and has nothing to do with scarecrows.

that said, jesus makes a great scarecrow :)

Interesting.....
 

There are many pagan fertility gods, and so the question posed is indeed a valled one the vanir of the nordic regions Priapus is a god of fertility, protector of horticulture and viticulture. His statue, holding a wooden sickle in his hand, was used in the Roman gardens as scarecrow. and since Catholism spread through the roman impire it is plosable that Priapus was used to win the masses to catholism. :cool: just a thought

I don't feel the need to comment one way or the other in this deeply philosophical debate. However, since we are discussing imagery and iconography, I feel that this thread is distinctly lacking visually.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...carecrow-m.jpg

Just trying to encourage conversation.