I am your father

Greek, Roman and Indian mythology do not have the remotest basis in Judaism. They found the 'one God' concept very weird indeed. Greek and Roman cultures descen,d if anything, from Egyptian ones- far older than Judaism. Indian mythology is its own, and also older than Judaism.

GL has talked of a number of his inspirations. Christainity has never been one of them. It doesn't quite have that storytelling tradition sweep he normally goes after.

And Anakin's birth fits the mythological profile FAR better than the Christian one. ESPECIALLY the going bad part, which is where comparisons with Christ totally fall apart.

Anakin is also not a God incarnate, his is a child of the Gods, half humam, half something else. Classic mythological stuff. He himself having a son further pushes it in the mytholgical direction.

Really, though they may appear similar, the Christian model is fundamentally very different to the mythological one, which is what this is.

actually the ties between judaism and greek and roman mythologies are very strong. while we call it "judaism" the religion of the people who later called themselves jews dates back since before even the egyptians came into existance as a people. as far as the myths of greek and roman gods having having children on earth, these are actually based on the biblical accounts of the time before the global flood. according to the bible, fallen angels came down to earth and had children with human women creating a superhuman race, which was later wiped out by the flood. hercules is an example of this idea taking root in other mythologies. my point is, if you go back far enough, all religions share common roots. as humanity spread, they adopted new beliefs and added and exaggerated the old tales, to come with specific stories unique to their own cultures. and if you want to get very specific, alot of the ideas and traditions in christianity and islam today are actually based on greek and roman mythology.

anyway, my point is that the mythology of star wars taps into that very basic vein of pretty much EVERYONES culture and religion. GL takes bits and peices of every one. anakin is not meant to be jesus christ. but hes also not meant to be hercules or some other cultures 'hero' either. he is a completely separate character, whose life has elements of many characters in our various cultures mythology. anyone who wants to say star wars has no parallels in christianity is being prejudiced and close-minded. George Lucas' heritage is largely based in christianity, and undobutely those ideas are part of his creative process in star wars, along with greek and roman mythology, budhism, hinduism, etc.

The religion of the jews is very old indeed, when Rome concurrent almost every known place, their land was taken but they could still keep their fates although it was difficult.
Egyptians? Be careful with what you say here, we don't know everything about this civilization and there are many many theories about this all, it could well be the oldest civilization ever (well at least a civilization that constructed something)

I can't follow your point with the children of god, as far as I know EVERY religion (not sure about Islam here) said that everyone comes from the gods, the pharaohs are the son of the gods, the Caesars of Rome were son of a god, heck, even in Greek and Indian society (the one from America)
How do you explain that they are based on the biblical accounts when it's proven that the bible wasn't written at that time (remember that the most recent part was written in 100 after Christ, and it was a story about him, so...) They wrote what they had talked about and made it look better and they promoted their faith with the bible.
But, yes, there was a flood, no doubts there...
(ps: the bible was NOT written before the flood)

I'm in no way Christian, but weren't the humans created by god? I think about adam and eve, who had kain and abel...
I've never heard about a superhuman race that got wiped out, last time I heard was that god killed all the "bad persons" with the flood so he could create a better world...

Ofcourse, all religions have common roots, I never said otherwise, and I don't think anyone said that it's not so. Because there are connections (and I'm not talking about the Mayas and the Egyptians here) people think that there was once a giant civilization but that got split up...
Good to know, the faith before Mohammed came, before he created the Islam like it now is, Islam had more then one god but Mohammed "deleted" this

Still, there are differences between christianity and the culture the Romans had, not only in the number of their gods (although the story goes that jews had more gods, that's why the ten commandments start with Thou shall not worship other gods...
Mind you that there is a big difference between the jews and the christians...

Yes, GL borrowed a lot from other cultures and religions but he SAID THAT ALREADY!
The story of Anakin is not something I heard, bringing balance to something is new (I think, but haven't checked Oriental cultures the last years...)

You are correct, there ARE stuff borrowed from christianity, the birth from a virgin, but that's ALL!
Anakin DOES have a father, the midi-chlorian, hence, QGJ: It's possible he was conceived by the midi-chlorians
He isn't the only person that heals people, it's a common Jedi trick; he turns evil (which is NOT something the good old jesus would do), he doesn't die hanging on a cross, BUT he DOES come back also as a ghost...
And tell me, which civilization DOESN'T talk about ghosts?
Let me give you an example from the year 243 BC:
a greek (or was it roman?) poetic was traveling and when he got a room somewhere (he wasn't in the city) he was working and working, and when it was completely dark he felt something on his shoulder, he looked and saw a ghost, but he said:
"Let me work, for just a few minutes more, I'm almost done here"
The ghost waited and when the poetic ended his work the ghost led the way, when they came in the garden the ghost stopped and pointed to a spot, the next day the poetic ordered people to start digging and they found a skeleton there.
This is proof that ghosts aren't around only in christianity (hence this is a story from BEFORE the birth of Christ)

just as an interesting point about the children of the gods that yess wasnt sure about being in the bible. according to the bible, the reason god brought about a flood was because angels saw that women on earth were hot and wanted to have sex with them. so they came down and had sex with them. their children were a superhuman hybrid race called the nephelim. they were wicked and abused their powers and slaughtered humans in their struggle for power. so basically, that is where its beleived the myths of 'gods' in most cultures came from. its really very facinsting.

in any case, GL took star wars from alot of different cultures. no one can claim it belongs entirely to one beleif system or another, which i think we were all in agreement upon to start with. so i think we can lay this part of the discussion to rest.

yeah, ok, you got the uncensurised version of the bible...(?)

and I never made a discussion about that, I pointed out that not all is christian and not all is christian-based

no, ive just actually read and studied the bible, so as not to be completely uneducated. theres alot of cool stuff in there. some of the battles would make great movies.

just to change the subject a little bit (the way i see it if people wanted to discuss religion we wouldnt be at a star wars forum 🙂 ) i still strongly beleive that palpatine has SOME sort of major involvement with anakins birth. i would be interested to know if anyone can find thematic problems with that general idea. would it adversely affect the story the movies are trying to tell?

The whole nephilim thing is VERT apocraphyal, bigsef.

And a quick note to yerss- the Caesars were NOT children of the Gods. I have no idea where you got that from. Two of them were declared Gods by the Senate as a good political move and a third was made a God by the Britons, but that's all.

And it's still a mistake to claim all religions come from the same root. VERY dodgy ground that. The Ice Age zeroed out all previous ties of mankind and civilisations- Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Baylonian, Indian, Chinese, and so on- all devloped SEPERATELY with NO tie between their belief systems once the Ice Age was over.

And I maintain that any Christianity influence in Anakin's plot is circumstantial at best. It does NOT fit the Christian model.

good grief, were back on religion again. :-) the nephelim are NOT apocraphyal in the least. theres a little book called genesis, accepted by christians, jews, and to a large degree by muslims. you might want to look at chapter 6. there is also reference to them in the book of Job, where they are called "men of fame" which is also not an apocraphyal book.

as far as my comments of religions coming from essentially the same place, it is almost unanimously agreed upon by nearly every culture on the planet that there was a global flood and only 8 people survived. those 8 people had the same belief system. as their children and grandchildren, etc. spread out, they took those same beleifs and gradually over time, they shifted to become the many religions we have today. new ideas came along, and those were incorporated, and in many cases overshadowed the existing religion and traditions. nevertheless, if you go back far enough, they all have SOME connection to one another.

as far as yesserots comment goes about the children of god, i dont know what he was talking about either. in old times it was common to refer to anyone in athority as a god, this included judges, kings, and people of importance. i dont know if this is what yess was referring to, but that could be it.

Sorry Ush, mistyped there, it was Caesar, Gaius Julius Caeser, who claimed to be the son of a god...

I said that they may had the same root, the possibility is there, but it's not certain!

Yes, big, you are correct, Genesis chapter 6, good one! (got ourselfs a christ-boy here 😉🙂)

And why 8 persons?

and yes, I was refering to those with an important role where often claimed "son of gods"

First of all, bigsef, that Nephilim thing is given as much credence as the whole homosexual burning thing, as far as the Bible goes.

Secondly, that 8 person thing of yours is just crap. Sorry, but there it is. It is a complete nonsense statement. No such thing EVER happened. I'm not sure where you got such rubbish from.

I repeat. Ancient cultures start from the end of the Ice Age, They start scattered and with NO connections. At all.

a little note: there is no doubt that the flood existed!

Actually there is evidence of a flood. At least for the whole Middle East. Sometime in the Early Bronze Age I think.

And as for the Nephilim, that story does sounds like a myth, but that does not make it apocryphical. Interestingly enough, many other religions, myths, talk about gods having intercourse with people and bringing forth giants. Now can we so safely say that ALL myths are nonsense without ANY historical basis. I believe it's too easy to say.

myths... let me think... those were made to explain certain stuff the people of that age couldn't explain, so no historical thing there

yess, i cant claim that im just smart, i actually got a bible of the shelf and looked!! thank goodness it was in chapter 6! if it had been further, i would have been looking for a while! 😉

actually ush, it seems you are either biggoted against christian beliefs or simply uninformed. and yerssot is correct. among sceintific fields there is absolutely no doubt that a flood occurred. the current debate is whether the ice age the ush stated caused the cultures to scatter was an ice age, or whether it was the flood, and theyve just misread the archeological evidence.

about the 8 person thing. biblically, noah, his wife, his three sons, and their three wives survived, so that makes 8. there are over 2,000 cultures on this planet that have flood stories and those that count the number of survivors put that number at 8. this is further corraborated by the fact that the japanese character for "ship" is composed of the symbol for "boat" beneath the symbol for "8." the same is similar with many native american cultures, although this isnt surprising since the ancient japaneese people are actually the ancestors of the native americans.

as far as the "homosexual burning" thing goes, that ones beyond me, ive never heard of it, so i cant comment on it. theres too many people using christianity to support their own little agenda so it wouldnt surprise me. 🙁

There is far more evidence of an Ice Age than a flood. Not that they are mutually exclusive

And I repeat- your 8 person thing is pure nonsense. It has absolutely no scientific basis whatosever, ABSOLUTELY NONE. I have heard of no civilsation ever that postulated this as fact. Nor has anyone I have ever met.

funny, I didn't know that EVERY culture said that it were 8 persons...

noah, his wife, his three sons, and their three wives survived
- I'm lucky you are here to tell us these things...
But remember Genosis chapter 41, 1!

But there's no proof for that Flood in that sense, Bigsef. I do agree with all these parrallells between these stories. In Mesopotamian culture there is the story of Utnapishtim, someone who survives a big flood with a boat. Very similiar to Noah, he also starts to grow vines and make wine.
But that of 8 people is not substantiated by any historical or archaeological fact.

now that I think of it...

there is an old Indian story that goes that, hmm forgot his name...
well, anyway, there is a big floot and he carves out a whale, and that whale come to life and saves him from drawning...
no 8 persons here...

There are many stories like that. I do think it refers to some kind of historical occasions. I also think myths are way toeasiliy discarded as pure 100% fairy tales.