In the articles exchanged by Farrell Till and Mark McFall, plagiarism seems to be the actual issue under dispute, although neither author hit this particular nail on the head. For his part, Till clearly showed the truth of what I once saw on a bumper sticker: Christianity Has Pagan DNA, while McFall did an extraordinary job of using Clintonian logic to split verbal hairs in an attempt to show that his religion didn’t do an exact 100% Xerox copy rip-off of paganism. One hundred percent Xerox copies, however, are not the issue. Plagiarism is, and Christianity clearly has plagiarized from paganism.
Of course, Christianity being the hypocrite that it is, plagiarizing by Christianity is okay, whereas plagiarizing of Christianity is not. For example, in the book The Kingdom of the Cults we read that "a careful examination of the Book of Mormon reveals that it contains thousands of words from the King James Bible" (Walter Martin, Bethany House Publishers, Minneapolis, MN, 1997, p. 204), 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" (Jerald & Sandra Tanner, Modern Microfilm Co., Salt Lake City, 1972, p. 74). 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.
Although Christians clearly see when others have plagiarized
from them, they have a harder time seeing when their own religion has
plagiarized from others. This is evidenced by the misguided thrust of
Mark McFall’s article. His whole defense against Till’s proof 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. He seems to
think that if he accomplishes this, if he can show even one tiny
deviation from the original, his religion of choice is off the hook.
What is missing in his defense is an awareness of the concept of
plagiarism. Plagiarism is not always colored in fundamentalist
black-and-white simplicity. Plagiarism does not require a 100%
correspondence to be plagiarism. As Black’s Law Dictionary states,
"The supporting evidence for the accusation of plagiarism may on
occasion be elusive" (7th Edition, West Group, St. Paul, MN, 1999, p.
1170). And what is the definition of plagiarism but to "take and use
the thoughts, writings, inventions etc. of another person as one’s own"
(DK Illustrated Oxford Dictionary, Oxford University Press, NY,
NY, 1998). In other words, plagiarism can be a paraphrase, a rewrite,
wherein the original source is not acknowledged. In short, McFall’s
attempt to show little piss-ant differences between the two stories
does not disprove plagiarism in the least.
Till never attempted to
prove Christian "resurrections" are exact Xerox copies of pagan
"resurrections" he didn’t have to in order to establish plagiarism, but
Mark McFall never seemed to notice this point, and thus he missed the
mark entirely with his excruciatingly detailed rebuttal to arguments
never made. Showing Christianity isn’t an exact clone of paganism
doesn’t disprove what Till wrote, and Till quite clearly showed that
Christianity has pagan DNA.
(Mark Smith, 9766 Chapman Avenue, PBM 192, Garden Grove, CA
92840 e-mail, JCnot4me@ aol.com web page members.aol. com/jcnot4me)
