Defense Laboratory / Are Christian beliefs borrowed from pagan religions?
1. The objection
“Long before Jesus, there were stories of gods who died and rose, of virgin births, of savior figures with twelve followers, of sacred meals and baptisms. Osiris, Mithras, Dionysus, Horus and Attis were all said to do such things. Christmas falls near the old winter festival and Easter has a pagan name. When the same pattern appears so many times, the sensible conclusion is that Christianity took an old pattern, gave it a Jewish name and called it new.”
2. Investigation
Assumptions
- That similar words, such as savior, resurrection or sacred meal, point to the same idea in every setting.
- That the claims made about the pagan figures, for example in popular books and websites, come from ancient sources and not from later writers.
- That a belief that resembles another must have been borrowed from it, and not arisen independently.
- That the dates of festivals show the origin of the beliefs behind them.
- That the earliest Christians, who were Jewish, would have been likely to borrow from pagan cults they considered idolatry.
Evidence and historical claims
- What do the ancient sources actually say about Osiris, Dionysus, Attis and Mithras, and how old is each source? Are the claimed parallels (virgin birth, death and rising, twelve followers) found in the ancient texts or only in modern retellings?
- What is known about the cult of Mithras, and how does the evidence for it compare in date with the New Testament?
- What did Jewish writers before and in the time of Jesus believe about resurrection (for example Daniel 12:2, Ezekiel 37, 2 Maccabees 7)?
- How and when did Christians settle the dates of Christmas and Easter, and what do historians say about the reasons? Which explanations are debated?
- What did the earliest Christian writers, such as Justin Martyr in the second century, say about the similarities that opponents pointed out?
Philosophical and theological claims
- What is the difference between borrowing, parallel development and shared human themes, and how could a historian tell them apart?
- Does it matter for the truth of a belief where it came from? Is this the genetic fallacy, the mistake of judging a claim by its origin alone?
- If a similarity were found, would it count against the Christian claim, or could it be read as a preparation for it?
Logical structure
- Premise 1: Christian teachings about a dying and rising savior resemble teachings in earlier pagan religions.
- Premise 2: Whenever one religion resembles an earlier one, it was copied from it.
- Conclusion: Therefore Christianity was copied from pagan religions, and has no unique claim.
- Check each premise separately. Premise 1 needs checking against the ancient sources themselves, and Premise 2 is a general rule that is not true in general.
3. Christian responses
Response A: The parallels are mostly false or weak (many historians and Christian scholars)
Many historians, including scholars who are not Christians, hold that the claimed parallels are often misdescribed. Many of the details in popular lists, such as a virgin birth of Horus or Mithras on the twenty-fifth of December, do not appear in ancient sources, or appear only in late sources. The cult of Mithras as practiced in the Roman empire is documented mostly from the first to fourth centuries, and the oldest surviving evidence for it is no earlier than the time of the New Testament.
Most scholars also point out that the dying and rising gods of the old fertility religions were tied to the cycle of the seasons, and that the idea of a single man, executed in a known place and time, who was seen alive again, is a different kind of claim. Even scholars who find some resemblance generally do not hold that the first Christians copied from these cults.
Response B: Real overlap exists, and God can work through shared human patterns (a view held by some Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant writers)
Some Christian thinkers accept that there are real resemblances between Christian practice and the wider ancient world, and do not find this troubling. Early writers such as Justin Martyr said that the Word was at work in the wider world before Christ. C. S. Lewis, among others, suggested that the myths of dying and rising gods could be seen as dim foreshadowing of a story that became fact in history.
Some Christians also accept that later Christian customs, such as the dating of Christmas or some seasonal practices, were shaped by their setting. The scholarly view is that the date of Christmas is debated: it may come from calculations about the date of the conception of Jesus, from a wish to answer a pagan feast, or from both. The position that results is that borrowing in customs does not show borrowing in beliefs.
Response C: The history of religions school and the view that Christianity grew in its setting (secular and critical scholarship)
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scholars of the history of religions school proposed that early Christianity was strongly shaped by the mystery cults and other religions around it. This view had great influence, but most specialists today think it overstated the case, and that the Jewish setting of the first Christians explains most of their beliefs.
Modern scholars of religion still study how early Christianity used Greek and Roman language and ideas, for example the word Lord (kyrios) or the Logos in John, and many find real influence there. They distinguish between words and concepts that were shared, and the core claims of the faith, which they trace mainly to Judaism.
Response D: The Jewish view
Jewish scholars point out that the first Christians were Jews, that the idea of resurrection was a development within Judaism, and that the New Testament is steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. From this point of view, the question of pagan borrowing is a mistake, since the main background is Jewish. Some Jewish writers also argue that the later church did adopt pagan customs, which is a separate matter from the earliest beliefs.
They do not usually conclude that the Christian claim is true, but they agree with many Christian scholars that the source of the earliest beliefs is to be sought among Jews of the time.
4. The strongest counterargument
The strongest reply to Response A is that the early Christians lived in a world where the language of savior, lord and divine son was already used, and a reader in the Greek world would have heard those words in the pagan sense. Critics say that dismissing the parallels as late or false does not remove the broader point: that the idea of a god who suffers, dies and returns was available in the ancient mind, and that it made the Christian message easier to accept. They also note that the sources for several cults are scarce, so the lack of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
The strongest reply to Response B is that if the shape of the Christian story is a common human pattern, then its appearance in history looks less like a unique event and more like a story that people are inclined to tell. A defender of the objection would say that saying the myths were a shadow of the true story assumes the conclusion. Defenders reply that a pattern that people long for does not show that the pattern is false, and that the distinctive claim is that it happened in a particular time and place.
5. Your independent defense
- Write the objection in one sentence in your own words.
- List the premises hidden in it, using the logic outline above, and mark which one you think is weakest.
- Choose two figures from the objection (for example Osiris and Mithras). For each, find in a reliable reference work what the ancient sources say and when they were written. Write a short table of the claim, the source and its date.
- Read Daniel 12:1-3 and Ezekiel 37:1-14. Write what each passage says about resurrection and how a first-century Jew might have understood it.
- Write a short paragraph on the genetic fallacy, and decide in your own words whether the origin of an idea shows whether it is true.
- Choose your own position and write 300 to 500 words defending it. State which resemblances you think are real, which are not, and what you think follows from them.
- Write the strongest objection to your own position. Make it as strong as you can, then answer it.
- Finally write one sentence on what would change your mind.
- Keep this in your own notebook or document. Do not send it anywhere.