No! Historic Christianity Is Not A Copycat Religion

 

            Mithras, Osiris, Horus, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, Demeter, Persephone, Aphrodite, Isis, Danae, Melanippe [and who knows how many more], are some of the deities claimed to be the source for the Christian miracle narratives. The virgin birth, sacrificial death, crucifixion, resurrection, etc. have been attributed to these deities. Hence, some skeptics claim that Christianity is false since it has copied the miracle narratives from the pre-christian deities/religions.

            But please note that no serious academic scholar/historian from any credible academic institution confer any credence to this accusation against Historic Christianity. This accusation is absolutely baseless and outdated, but still it makes its rounds in social media as and when appropriate.

            Here is a few reasons why this accusation is without any credible foundation:

            1. Dr. William Lane Craig dismisses these accusations based on the lack of serious scholarship, “When they say that Christian beliefs about Jesus are derived from pagan mythology, I think you should laugh. Then look at them wide-eyed and with a big grin, and exclaim, "Do you really believe that?" Act as though you've just met a flat earther or Roswell conspirator. You could say something like, "Man, those old theories have been dead for over a hundred years! Where are you getting this stuff?" Tell them this is just sensationalist junk, not serious scholarship. If they persist, then ask them to show you the actual passages narrating the supposed parallel. They're the ones who are swimming against the scholarly consensus, so make them work hard to save their religion. I think you'll find that they've never even read the primary sources.”¹

            2. Dr. Mark Foreman questions the causal influence of the parallels. Even if there were parallels, there is no good evidence to ascertain that these parallels influenced the Historic Christian worldview. He emphasizes that Judaism, which is an extremely exclusive monotheistic religion, would not have tolerated the syncretism of the mystery religions. Moreover, the earliest Christians, who were primarily Jews, were even more exclusivistic. Hence, they would not have imported any stories from the mystery religions.²

            3. Greg Koukl encourages Christians and honest seekers to primarily examine the credibility of the Historic Christian narrative. He says, “Those myths are only valuable if you first determine that Jesus is a fiction by looking at the primary source historical documentation. If you look at the historical record and decide that it is unreliable, if you first conclude that there is no good reason to believe that Jesus of Nazareth existed the way the Biblical records say He did, then it might then, and only then be useful to ask the question: How did this story come to be?”³ He also states that the primary source documentation is highly credible for Historic Christianity than the mystery religions.⁴

            4. Sean Mcdowell in an article entitled “Is Christianity a Copycat Religion?” emphasizes that the differences between Christianity and the mystery religions are more profound than the alleged similarities. He also asserts that the parallels prove nothing, and the chronology is all wrong.⁵

            These reasons are sufficient to dismiss these accusations against Historic Christianity.

            Last but not the least, even non-christian scholars reject these accusations:⁶

Dr. Tryggve Mettinger (a Swedish professor at Lund University) has written the most comprehensive account of the dying and rising god motif. He himself affirms the concept of “dying and rising gods.”[3] Yet he concedes that he is in the strict minority: “There is now what amounts to a scholarly consensus against the appropriateness of the concept [of dying and rising gods]. Those who still think differently are looked upon as residual members of an almost extinct species… Major scholars in the fields of comparative religion and the Bible find the idea of dying and rising deities suspect or untenable.”[4] For instance, Jonathan Z. Smith (historian from the University of Chicago) writes, “All the deities that have been identified as belonging to the class of dying and rising deities can be subsumed under the two larger classes of disappearing deities or dying deities. In the first case, the deities return but have not died; in the second case, the gods die but do not return.”[5]

Skeptic Matt Dillahunty (of Atheist Experience) writes, “The first third of the film (Zeitgeist) is an unscholarly, sophomoric, horribly flawed, over-simplification that tries to portray Christianity as nothing more than the next incarnation of the astrologically themed religions that preceded it. Like all conspiracy theories, they combine a few facts, focus on correlations and build an intriguing story that seems to fit the pieces together nicely—provided you don’t actually dig below the surface to find out where they might have gone wrong.”

In describing the German higher critical school which gave birth to this entire theory (Religiongeschichtliche Schule), critical scholar Maurice Casey writes that this is “now regarded as out of date” and “significantly mistaken.”^[6]

Regarding the Cross and Atonement, atheistic critical scholar Bart Ehrman writes, “Where do any of the ancient sources speak of a divine man who was crucified as an atonement for sin? So far as I know, there are no parallels to the central Christian claim. What has been invented here is not the Christian Jesus but the mythicist claims about Jesus… The majority of scholars agree… there is no unambiguous evidence that any pagans prior to Christianity believed in dying and rising gods.”^[7] He adds, “None of this literature is written by scholars trained in the New Testament.”^[8]

            So whenever you come across an accusation that Historic Christianity is a copycat religion, you can wholeheartedly pay no attention to the accusation, for it is tenuous, asinine, and sophomoric.

Endnotes:

¹https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/jesus-and-pagan-mythology/

²http://christianapologeticsalliance.com/2017/03/12/did-christianity-copy-from-paganism-part-2-no-causal-influence/

³https://www.str.org/w/the-zeitgeist-movie-other-myth-claims-about-jesus#.UcbtoT772vE

⁴Ibid.

⁵https://www.apologeticsbible.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Is-Christianity-A-Copycat-Religion_.pdf

⁶http://christianapologeticsalliance.com/2017/02/10/did-christianity-copy-from-paganism-part-1/#_ftn4

Websites last accessed on 19^th July 2021.