Mythology in the Greco-Roman world had dying and rising god-men—Apollo, Asclepius, Hercules, Tammuz. Serapis was called Lord. Half the Greek gods were said to be born of virgins. Hercules ascended to heaven.
Just how unique is Jesus’ deity? What’s original about Jesus as being born of a virgin and being the Son of God?
Is there something to the claim that these teachings of Christianity weren’t original, but were borrowed from pagan mythology?
Let’s look at a couple possible parallels. Isis and Osiris were Egyptian deities, with Isis being the goddess of heaven, earth, sea, and underworld and Osiris being her husband. According to one myth, Osiris’s brother murdered him and sank his coffin into the Nile. Isis recovered the body, which the brother discovered, dismembered into fourteen pieces, and scattered all over Egypt. In some versions of the story, Osiris came back to life (so that Isis and Osiris were able to conceive their son Horus), while in other versions, he became king of the underworld. Perhaps this myth was one of the sources behind the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection? Or perhaps of his baptism (since Osiris was killed and buried in the Nile)?
“What’s original about Jesus as being born of a virgin and being the Son of God?”
Another parallel that has been suggested is the Taurobolium ritual, in which a bull would be slaughtered over a pit so that the person below could be drenched in its blood. This ritual was for devotees of the goddess Cybele, whose relationship with her consort Attis has also been put forward as a parallel with the Christian story. When Attis fell in love with someone else, Cybele drove him insane, and he castrated himself. Cybele felt remorse and asked Zeus to restore his life. Attis’s resurrection, possibly on the spring equinox, was meant to be a mythological explanation of the annual vegetative cycle. Could Attis’s resurrection be a source of the stories of Jesus’ resurrection? Could the Taurobolium ritual be behind the Christian concept of being “baptized” in the blood of Jesus?
First, there’s the question of historicity. We need to be aware that not all stories are grounded in the same level of historicity. Oxford theologian Michael Green has pointed out,
“The really special thing was this: nobody had ever attributed divinity and a virgin birth, resurrection, and ascension to a historical person whom lots of people knew. And certainly nobody ever claimed that the one and only God, the Creator and the Judge of the whole earth, had embodied himself in Apollo, Hercules, Augustus, and the rest. Folk like Apollo were mythical figures whom nobody in their right mind believed in. Folk like Hercules, born of the amours of Zeus with mortal women, were equally imaginary. As for the ruler cult that divinized ‘Rome and Augustus,’ it was just a convenient tool for controlling the empire and nobody took it seriously.”[1]
“Not all stories are grounded in the same level of historicity.”
Second, we need to pay attention to chronology. Christology expert Ron Rhodes explains, “Almost all of our sources of information about the pagan religions alleged to have influenced early Christianity are dated very late. We frequently find today’s writers quoting from documents written 300 years later than the virgin birth.”[2] This isn’t to say that Osiris, Attis, etc. as mythological figures came after Jesus, but that their myths developed over time and our information regarding them is often later than the New Testament. Thus, when we do see similar language and themes, it’s just as possible that the influence could have been the other way around.
Third, there’s the question of culture. In what culture did Christianity originate? Jesus, His apostles, the first Christians, and all the New Testament authors except possibly Luke shared the same ethnicity: they were Jews.[3] Christianity sprang up almost overnight in Jerusalem, where such pagan myth would be rejected as blasphemy, but where two other forms of evidence would be accepted: Scripture and sense experience. These are exactly what the disciples argued from (Jews convincing other Jews), sayings things like,
“Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know . . . you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. But God raised Him up again.” (Acts 2:22-24a, NASB)
“Jesus, His apostles, the first Christians, and all the New Testament authors except possibly Luke shared the same ethnicity: they were Jews.”
Then they would quote Old Testament prophecies such as, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at My right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet” (Acts 2:34-35, NASB; cf. Ps. 110:1). Clearly, the movement spread not by embellishing Christ with Greek stories but by connecting Christ with Jewish Scripture and sense experience.
Fourth, we need to pay attention to genre, particularly the genre of the Gospels versus pagan mythology. C.S. Lewis, himself a literary scholar, concluded,
“All I am in private life is a literary critic and historian, that’s my job. And I’m prepared to say on that basis if anyone thinks the Gospels are either legends or novels, then that person is simply showing his incompetence as a literary critic. I’ve read a great many novels and I know a fair amount about the legends that grew up among early people, and I know perfectly well the Gospels are not that kind of stuff.”[4]
According to Lewis, the way modern New Testament critics can get away with such reckless skepticism is “only because the men who knew the facts are dead and can’t blow the gaff.”[5]
“The way modern New Testament critics can get away with such reckless skepticism is ‘only because the men who knew the facts are dead and can’t blow the gaff.'”
Philosophy professor Ronald Nash has summarized the situation by saying,
“During a period of time running roughly from about 1890 to 1940, scholars often alleged that primitive Christianity had been heavily influenced by Platonism, Stoicism, the pagan religions, or other movements in the Hellenistic world. Largely as a result of a series of scholarly books and articles written in rebuttal, allegations of early Christianity’s dependence on its Hellenistic environment began to appear much less frequently in the publications of Bible scholars and classical scholars. Today most Bible scholars regard the question as a dead issue.”[6]
The idea that Jesus as the divine Son of God is unoriginal is interesting at a glance, but on closer inspection, it is a makeshift heap built on wobbly assumptions. The original disciples would have had to achieve the impossible in order to trick their fellow Jews through mythology into believing that the man they had seen was truly the miracle-working, Scripture-fulfilling Messiah. No, they were able to convince other Jews because those Jews knew the Scriptures and had seen the Man themselves.
[1] Michael Green, Avoiding Jesus: Answers for Skeptics, Cynics, and the Curious (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005), 99.
[2] Ronald Rhodes, “Virgin Birth” (lecture, Veritas Evangelical Seminary, Murrieta, CA, 2009.
[3] Bruce Metzger, The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003), 21.
[4] Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 582.
[5] Geisler, 582.
[6] Ronald Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought, quoted in Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 2007), 167.
