Gods born on December 25th:

[struggle4progress]

58. That's the Kersey Graves book from 1875. We've discussed it extensively

here previously. Back then, Graves' scholarship struck me as rather unimpressive:

Graves claims Krishna was crucified, and cites as evidence the report of a Mr. Higgins of a sculpture, allegedly in the British museum, showing Krishna "represented with a hole in the top of one foot, just above the toes, where the nail was inserted in the act of crucifixion." Since the ancient Mahabharata reports Krishna went to heaven after being shot in the foot by an arrow, it is reasonable to wonder whether the sculpture allegedly seen by Mr. Higgins does not represent the arrow-wound in Krishna's foot

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/cv/wscs/wscs21.htm
http://www.indianetzone.com/38/death_lord_krishna.htm

Graves next speaks of the crucifixion of Sakia Muni, who he says is also known as Budha Sakia. But Sakyamuni is, in fact, just another name for Gautama Buddha, who (according to the Maha-Parinibbana-Sutta) went with his disciples to a grove on the banks of the Hirannavati at Kusinara, had a lengthy conversation on various matters, and then entered into a series of trances that carried him away: the standard Buddhist canon does not teach that Buddha was crucified

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/cv/wscs/wscs21.htm
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/dharmadata/fdd36.ht...
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/India/buddha-life.html

After this, Graves wants to discuss "Thammuz of Syria." Mr. Higgins (whose ignorance of the Mahabharata we noticed above) now is cited as an authority on the crucifixion of Thammuz. Now Tammuz is in fact a very ancient character, already mentioned in the saga Gilgamesh. In "TAMMUZ AND ISHTAR: A MONOGRAPH UPON BABYLONIAN RELIGION AND THEOLOGY CONTAINING EXTENSIVE EXTRACTS FROM THE TAMMUZ LITURGIES AND ALL OF THE ARBELA ORACLES" (1914), Langdon says He appears in the great theological list as dumu-zi ab-zu, Tammuz of the nether sea and cites an ancient liturgy that speaks of the youthful god who perished in his boat, and another of the wild wind and wave which carried him away. The scholarship of Graves does not appear to compare favorably to the scholarship of Langdon

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/cv/wscs/wscs21.htm
http://www.archive.org/stream/tammuzandishtar00languoft/tammuzandishtar00languoft_djvu.txt

So far Graves seems to have won zero of three, and there seems little point continuing to examine his claims