9/8/2020 Was the Resurrection of Jesus a Repackaged Pagan Myth?

| Emergence Church - New Jersey

WAS THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS A

REPACKAGED PAGAN MYTH?
April 2nd, 2018

by Doug Becker, Pastor of Theology

The purpose of this brief essay is to confront the idea that the New Testament concept of
the death and resurrection of Jesus was somehow borrowed or influenced by pagan
religious traditions. The attempt to account for the origins of Christian beliefs in this way
is often called Jesus mythicism, and is commonly found in popular-level conspiracy
theories such as those put forward in the 2007 film Zeitgeist, and by authors such as
Richard Carrier and Robert Price. The claim is that religions which predate Christianity
contain stories about dying and rising gods, and that the early Christians borrowed and
adapted these stories, and that they provide the true origin of the belief in Jesus’
resurrection.

The roots of this idea were initially popularized in the late-nineteenth century by James

Frazer in his book, The Golden Bough,[1] and are typically not accepted among scholars
working in the field of ancient religion today. The New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman,
who teaches at the University of North Carolina and is well-known critic of orthodox
Christianity, wrote an entire book confronting the increasingly popular mythicist notion
that Jesus did not even exist. In it, he offers the following comment on the complete lack
of mythicist scholars working in the field:

At a reputable university, of course, professors cannot teach simply anything. They need
to be academically responsible and reflect the views of scholarship. That is probably why

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there are no mythicists—at least to my knowledge—teaching religious studies at
accredited universities or colleges in North America or Europe. It is not that mythicists
are lacking in hard-fought views and opinions or that they fail to mount arguments to
back them up. It is that their views are not widely seen as academically respectable by
members of the academy. That in itself does not make the mythicists wrong. It simply
makes them marginal.”[2]

Mythicist theories have not gained acceptance in the scholarly community.

Those who seek to apply mythicists ideas to the resurrection story usually do so by
arguing that a belief in dying and rising gods in the ancient world was somehow borrowed
by the early Christians and applied to Jesus. For them, this serves as an explanation of
how the early church came to believe that Jesus had been raised bodily from the dead—it

isn’t because it actually happened; it’s because the early Christians were recycling myths
from pagan religions that contain stories about deities who experienced life after death.

There are several major problems with this line of reasoning, each of which contains
either lazy scholarship, extraordinarily bad logic, historical ignorance, appeal to weak

parallels from ancient religious traditions, equivocation of key concepts such as

“crucifixion” or “resurrection,” or all of the above.

General Problems with Resurrection Mythicism

Death is Not an Uncommon Problem

First and foremost, we need to ask whether it is surprising that any religion, old or new,
should address the problem of death. The reality of suffering in general and death in

particular is such a common problem throughout humanity that it goes without saying.
Why would we think it unexpected, then, that ancient religions contain stories that portray

their gods as somehow victorious over these things? The idea of life after death is simply
not novel enough to warrant the conclusions drawn from it by mythicists. Is the only way

to account for this idea across human cultures to say that borrowing has taken place?
Would we argue that movies such as Beetlejuice, Ghost, the Friday the 13th series, or
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Coco are derivative of Christianity, simply because their characters experience life beyond
the grave? Of course not. Why, then, should Christianity be regarded as derived from

dying and rising myths, simply because it addresses this idea? It is worth pointing out

also that some of these myths are as distant in the past from the historical Jesus as
these movies are into the future![3]

Life After Death Does Not Equal Resurrection

The concept of resurrection as the future hope for believers, expressed in Christianity,
has its roots in Judaism and is profoundly unique in the ancient world. The New

Testament is very clear that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead in human history.
After his resurrection, Jesus offers various “proofs” to his disciples to help their faith,

most notably inviting them to touch him and eating with them. Note Jesus’ statement to
his disciples in Luke 24:39: “A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

This is not to deny that Jesus’ body was in some ways different after his resurrection. But
nevertheless, the Christian story is that Jesus was not raised in merely some “spiritual”

sense (whatever that would mean), but that he was was physically raised by the Father in
real-world history. Resurrection, in Christian theology, refers to something that happens

to the body after life after death.[4] By contrast, all of the alleged parallels offered by
dying-and-rising-god mythicists either take place in a mythical realm, or are simply

examples of divine figures finding good fortune in the afterlife. Only in Judaism and
Christianity is there belief in a bodily resurrection, and only in Christianity is there

someone who experiences this before the last day.[5] It is not Jesus’ ascension into
heaven that is unique to Christianity, it is his resurrection.[6] In order to circumvent this

problem, mythicists must use over-generalizing language (e.g., “dying and rising gods”) in
order to establish parallels. But the point remains: if we’re not talking about physical

resurrection in history, we’re not talking about Christianity, or anything like it. N. T. Wright

observes,

As far as the ancient pagan world was concerned, the road to the underworld ran only one

way. Death was all-powerful; one could neither escape it in the first place nor break its

power once it had come Everybody knew there was in fact no answer to death The
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power once it had come. Everybody knew there was in fact no answer to death. The
ancient pagan world then divided broadly into those who, like Homer’s shades, might have

wanted a new body but knew they couldn’t have one and those who, like Plato’s

philosophers, didn’t want one because being a disembodied soul was far better. . . .

Resurrection meant bodies. We cannot emphasize this too strongly, not least because

much modern writing continues, most misleadingly, to use the word resurrection as a
virtual synonym for life after death in the popular sense.[7]

The very notion of dying and rising gods in antiquity is a matter of significant debate

among scholars. Jonathan Z. Smith, of the University of Chicago, begins his highly
influential article on this subject by commenting, “The category of dying and rising gods,

once a major topic of scholarly investigation, must now be understood to have been

largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or highly

ambiguous texts.”[8] Later, he adds,

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. There is no unambiguous instance in the history of religions of a

dying and rising deity.[9]

It should be noted that Tryggve Mettinger has attempted to restore the category of dying
and rising gods as an appropriate label for some ancient Near Eastern deities.[10]

Unconvincing Parallels

Another major problem with attempting to trace the origin of Christ’s resurrection from

myths about dying and rising gods arises when we consider the myths on their own

terms. The first order of business for anyone investigating the claims of mythicism

should be to read the original sources—not the selective retelling of them by mythicists,
but the stories themselves. Mythicist claims should not be accepted without references
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to the texts that they claim to support their views. When we examine the various

mythologies, the alleged parallels begin to break down before our eyes. In what follows, I

give a short rundown of the gods who are usually placed in the dying and rising category,
and a brief response to each.

Before doing so, it is worth noting that one particularly unfortunate tactic used by

mythicists is what has been called the terminology fallacy, where “events in the lives of

the mythical gods . . . are expressed using Christian terminology in order subtly to
manipulate viewers [or readers] into accepting that the same events in the life of Jesus

also happened in the lives of mythical gods.”[11] And so, it is common to hear

mythological elements described as baptisms, virgin births, crucifixions, resurrections,

and so on. For example, atheist Richard Carrier deceptively claims that, in Mesopotamian
mythology, the goddess Inanna was “crucified (nailed up) during her mythical descent into

the underworld.[12] But in the text to which Carrier is referring, the Sumerian version of

“Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld,” Inanna is not crucified; she is killed, and her

already dead body is hung on a hook for three days and three nights.[13] Crucifixion was
a much later form of execution, not a means of displaying an already dead body. Likewise,

Acharya S., the main consultant for the Zeitgeist movie, attempts justify her “crucifixion”

language in the following way:

When it is asserted that Horus (or Osiris) was “crucified” it should be kept in mind that it

was not part of the Horus/Osiris myth that the murdered god was held down and nailed

on a cross, as we perceive the meaning of “crucified” to be, based on the drama we

believe allegedly took place during Christ’s purported passion. Rather in one myth Osiris
is torn in pieces before being raised from the dead, while Horus is stung by a scorpion

prior to his resurrection. However, Egyptian deities, including Horus, were depicted in

cruciform with arms extended or outstretched, as in various images that are comparable

to crucifixes.[14]

This apparently justifies referring to any deity depicted with outstretched arms as having

been crucified, even when those images have nothing to do with the deity’s purported
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death! If this is the standard we are going to use to identify crucifixions, then we have a
much bigger issue than the one identified by mythicists, because it just so happens that

plenty of people stretch out their arms for all kinds of reasons. Kate Winslet, being held

by Leonardo DiCaprio on the bow of the Titanic, was crucified! Willem Dafoe, being shot

to death in Vietnam in Platoon, was crucified! Even Bane, while fighting Batman in the
batcave was crucified! Can anyone say Zeigeist sequel (ca-ching!)? Excuse my sarcasm,

but the point is that we need to be very careful when we encounter Christian terms being

used to make similarities to pagan myths sound closer than they really are.

Specific Examples

            I would now like to illustrate some of the principles I have just discussed by giving

brief descriptions of some of the more common ancient divine figures who are often cited

by mythicists as examples of dying and rising gods whose stories influenced the
narratives about Jesus’ death and resurrection. Of course, there are others (there are

always others!), but these, in my reading and experience, are the most common, and the

most credible. Feel free to email me with questions you might have about deities that are

not mentioned here.

Adonis

Greek traditions indicate that Adonis was originally worshiped as a god of vegetation in

Byblos in the first millennium BC. Adonis is the Greek version of the ancient
Mesopotamian shepherd-god Dumuzi (see below). His nearby shrine was destroyed by
Emperor Constantine in the fourth century AD. An ancient mythical compendium from the

second century AD, Bibliotheca, claims he is the son of a Syrian king named Theias
(possibly Toi of 2 Sam 8:9–10?). According to the myth, the infant Adonis is locked in a

chest by Aphrodite and given to her sister Persephone, who refuses to return her. Zeus
settles the dispute by allowing Adonis to spend part of the year in the upper-world (with
Aphrodite) and the other part in the underworld (with Persephone). In another account,

Adonis is killed by a boar and Aphrodite commemorates him with a flower In the first
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Adonis is killed by a boar and Aphrodite commemorates him with a flower. In the first
story, Adonis does not die. In the second, he does not rise.

Attis

The mythology of this Phyrgian deity does not give a hint of resurrection. In the Phrygian
version, he is killed by being castrated (possibly by himself!). In another story, he is killed
by a boar sent by Zeus. The notion that he was raised comes from a questionable

interpretation of a later festival dedicated to the goddess Cybele, who was Attis’ consort
(and much more commonly worshiped). Part of this week was called Dies Sanguinis, the

“Day of Blood,” which was followed on the next day by the Hilaria, the “Day of Rejoicing,”
during which Attis was celebrated as reborn. While this is a concept similar to
resurrection, the problem with seeing Christianity as being derived from this is that there

is no evidence of this festival until it is mentioned in the Chronography of 354, from—you

guessed it—354 AD. There is no mention of Attis’ “resurrection” whatsoever until the work,
De errore profanarum religionum, by Julius Firmicus Maternus (ca. 346 AD). Lynn Roller,

of the University of California, even notes that “in the fourth century CE, the cult of Cybele
and Attis formed a conspicuous rallying point for that part of the Roman aristocracy that

had not been converted to Christianity.”[15] In other words, the celebration of Attis as
risen from the dead is first attested in the same century that upper class Romans turned
to it as a viable alternative to following Jesus of Nazareth (what a coincidence! >cough<).

Baal

Although Baal is known throughout the Old Testament as a title for a variety of foreign
gods, by far, the most detailed information we have about his worship comes to us from

an epic story preserved on six clay tablets found in the ancient city of Ugarit (modern day
Ras Shamra in Syria), which was destroyed at the end of the Bronze Age in approximately
1200 BC.

Among the peoples that lived in the ancient Near East, Baal was considered a storm deity
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who brought rain, often depicted riding on clouds, brandishing a battle-axe in one hand

and lightning in the other. In the Baal myth, Baal, after slaying his rival Yam (the god of
the sea) and establishing his rule, ventures to the underworld to challenge Mot, the god of

death. It is unclear what happens next. Immediately before the confrontation, Baal
copulates with a heifer, who conceives a male child whom Baal clothes. Unfortunately, the
tablet is damaged here and over forty lines are missing immediately after this. When the

text resumes, El, the chief deity, is receiving news of Baal’s death. Has Baal actually died,
or has he fooled Mot into killing his heifer-offspring instead?[16] We cannot be sure. What
we do know is that the warrior goddess Anat vengefully slaughters Mot, and soon after

Baal returns and slays his enemies.

Scholars disagree whether or not Baal can be considered a dying and rising god. Mark
Smith, who produced the most authoritative and influential translation of the story
described above, does not think so.[17] In 1998, Smith even wrote a lengthy article

exposing the many inaccuracies and methodological problems associated with the dying
and rising god hypothesis, not just regarding Baal, but with Adonis, Dumuzi, Heracles,

Melqart, and Osiris as well.[18] Jonathan Z. Smith (mentioned above; no relation to Mark)
concurs.[19] On the other hand, there are other reputable scholars, such as Dennis Pardee
and John Day who are quite happy to consider Baal a dying and rising god based on this

text.[20] What is clear, however, is that any attempt to draw a line between what happens
to Baal in this myth and what happened to Jesus is an exercise in futility. The text, which
is broken at several key points, is simply too ambiguous. At best this serves to illustrate

the point made earlier, that victory over death (here quite literally) is an important
achievement for a deity.

Osiris

Boasting a mythical tradition of over a thousand years, mythicists often attempt to

connect the events surrounding this prominent Egyptian deity’s death with Jesus.
According to the story, Osiris’ brother Seth kills him. The motive and details differ

depending on the text. By the time we reach the New Kingdom (ca. 1550 BC), the claim is
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depe d g o t e te t. yt et e e eac t e e gdo (ca. 550 C), t e c a s
that Osiris had been dismembered and his body parts scattered throughout Egypt, with

each part representing each of the forty-two nomes of Egypt.[21] His wife, Isis, then
scours Egypt to collect his parts and reassembles him, with the help of some of the other
gods, whose powers are needed for the process. This provides the mythical prototype for

the Egyptian practice of mummification (in iconography, Osiris is always mummified). He

then is able to conceive his son Horus, the earthly embodiment of whom are the Egyptian
Pharaohs (upon coronation, a king received his “Horus name”). Osiris, on the other hand,

lives on to rule Duat, the realm of the dead.[22] This is not a resurrection.

Dumuzi/Tammuz

Dumuzi was worshiped in ancient Mesopotamian cultures, usually as the god of

shepherds. He was worshiped in a funerary cult, which sang hymns of mourning during
the month that bore his name (which was adopted into the Hebrew calendar). This

coincided with the dry and barren months of summer. Such mourning rituals continued
far into the common era, and are even referenced in Ezekiel 8:14 as an “abomination.” In
the Sumerian version of “Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld,” Dumuzi is condemned to

death as a replacement for his wife Inanna, who chooses him for this fate when she sees
him being entertained by servant girls while she is in the realm of the dead. He returns
annually, restoring his wife’s powers of fertility. In the Sumerian poem, The Return of

Dumuzid, Inanna allows him to spend half the year with her, restoring her powers of
fertility, and half in the underworld, foreshadowing the almost identical compromise

imposed by Zeus on Aphrodite and Persephone in the Adonis mythology. Other, more
obscure texts, give different accounts of Dumuzi’s death.

            Interestingly, the only known individual from the ancient world who interpreted
Dumuzi/Tammuz mourning rites as concluding with a resurrection was the early
Alexandrian Christian theologian Origin, in his Selecta in Ezechielem. Otherwise, the

Dumuzi myths were understood for what they were—stories of a god who was constantly
given over to death, and whose was as much at home in the abode of the dead than he

f
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was in the land of the living.

Final Observations

This has been intended is a short response to the idea of resurrection mythicism, not a
definitive refutation of all the ideas associated with it (and they are legion!). In grappling

with these things, it is sometimes easy to lose track of the bottom line: The resurrection
of Jesus is a true historical event. Our confidence in this does not come from our ability

to refute mythicists, but from the testimony of the Scriptures and, to a lesser extent, from
the historical evidence of the resurrection. Jesus’ crucifixion under Pontius Pilate; his
burial in the tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea; the empty tomb; his post-mortem

appearances to the women, the eleven disciples, and to other eyewitnesses; the rise of
early Christianity in Jerusalem where many of these things had taken place; the lack of

embellishment and theologizing in the Gospels’ crucifixion and resurrection accounts; the
use of women as the primary witnesses[23]—all these factors and more should establish
a very high degree of confidence in the resurrection of Jesus (and perhaps should be the

subject of a subsequent essay). My point, however, is that the attempted assault on

Christian faith by mythicists should never be a reason for a believer to doubt the
truthfulness of the resurrection. This is so, not only because the mythicists’ claims are

exceedingly weak and disreputable among scholars, but because all of the positive
reasons to believe in the resurrection remain, despite those claims.

            To many, the analysis of the mythicists position given above might be new and
unfamiliar territory. For clarity and simplicity, I will end with a restatement of the main

points.

1. Jesus mythicists are not representative of mainstream scholarship.

2. Fear of death and questions about the afterlife is common to virtually all human
cultures. It is not surprising therefore that many ancient myths would address this

subject matter and would portray some of their deities as having overcome death.
3. The New Testament concept of resurrection is a unique idea that has its roots in
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Judaism, not pagan mythology. True resurrection is something that happens to

physical bodies. For this reason alone, none of the myths put forward by the mythicists
are legitimate parallels to Christian belief.
4. The parallels that are often cited fail on several grounds.

1. Life in the realm of the dead, or being permitted to vacillate between the realm of the

dead and of the living, is not resurrection. This applies to Adonis, Osiris, and Dumuzi.
2. The story of Attis rising from the dead postdates the Christian belief in the
resurrection, and quite possibly arose as an alternative to it.

3. The myth of Baal is ambiguous and is damaged at the relevant section, and we
therefore lack sufficient knowledge of whether or not he died, let alone whether he
was raised. And even if we say that he was, this is merely an example of a deity

achieving victory over death (see point 2 above).

5. Mythicist claims do not sufficiently address the historical evidence for the resurrection
of Jesus.
 

[1] James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (London: Macmillan, 1890).

[2] Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New
York: HarperCollins, 2012), 220. I have chosen to cite Ehrman, not because I agree with all
his views on Christianity and the New Testament, but to give an example of an

unbelieving scholar who has written against the views of the Jesus mythicists. Ehrman
has an entire section on dying and rising gods and their irrelevance to the resurrection of
Jesus on pages 220–40 of his book. I do not agree with some of his reasons for rejecting

mythicists claims, but his argument through page 230 is sound.

[3] For example, Dumizi and Osirus were both worshipped as early as the 2000’s BC. We
tend to lump all things “ancient” or all things “BC” into one grand category, while in reality,
history stretched back from Christ further into the past than it does forward to our own

day Consider the story in Genesis 12 where Abram flees to Egypt because of a famine in
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day. Consider the story in Genesis 12, where Abram flees to Egypt because of a famine in
Canaan. At that time (ca. 2000 BC), many of the pyramids were already ancient
monuments.

[4] “Life after life after death” is a phrase coined by N. T. Wright.

[5] Note Martha’s confusion over Jesus’ words about her brother Lazarus in John 11:23–
14: “Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he
will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’” Grounded in the Old Testament, this

Jewish belief in a physical eschatological resurrection is also the background of several

other passages in the Gospels (e.g., Matt 13:43; Mark 12:18–27; John 5:29).

[6] Perhaps this is why a mythicist such as Richard Carrier is so concerned to advance
the spurious argument that Paul (who gives us our earliest example of the core Christian
message about the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15) did not preach a physical, but a

“spiritual” resurrection.

[7] N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission
of the Church (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 35–36.

[8] Jonathan Z. Smith, “Dying and Rising Gods,” Encyclopedia of Religion (2d. ed., ed.
Lindsay Jones; Detroit: Macmillan, 2005), 4:2535.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Riddle of the Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in
the Ancient Near East(Stockholm: Almquist and Wiskell International, 2001).

[11] Mark W. Foreman, “Challenging the Zeitgeist Movie: Parallelomania on Steroid,” in

Come Let Us Reason: New Essays in Christian Apologetics (ed. Paul Copan and William

Lane Craig; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2012), 176.

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[12] Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt
(Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014), Kindle location 1990.

[13] This happens only in the Sumerian version of the story (lines 164–72, available from

The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature at

http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr141.htm). The text reads, “The afflicted woman was
turned into a corpse. And the corpse was hung on a hook.” In the later Akkadian version,
in which the deity is called Ishtar, she is simply “diseased” from head to toe (lines 69–75,
Stephanie Dalley, “The Descent of Ishtar to the Underworld,” in Context of Scripture

Volume 1: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World [eds. William Hallo and K.
Lawson Younger, Jr.; Leiden: Brill, 2003]: 1.108).

[14] D. M. Murdock, Christ in Egypt: The Jesus-Horus Connection (Seattle: Stellar House,
2009), 335. Cited in Foreman, 178. “Acharya S” is Murdock’s pen name.

[15] Lynn E. Roller, “Cybele,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, 3:2110.

[16] Johannes C. de Moor, The Seasonal Pattern in the Ugaritic Myth of Baʿlu According to
the Version of Ilimilku (AOAT 16; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Butzon & Bercker, 1971), 188 ; J. C. L.

Gibson, “The Last Enemy,” SJT 32 (1979): 159–60.

[17] Mark S. Smith, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle: Volume 1. Introduction with Text, Translation
and Commentary of KTU 1.1–1.2 (VTSup 55; Leiden: Brill, 1994) and Mark S. Smith and
Wayne T. Pitard, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle: Volume 2. Introduction with Text, Translation
and Commentary of KTU 1.3–1.4 (VTSup 114; Leiden: Brill).

[18] Mark S. Smith, “The Death of ‘Dying and Rising God’ in the Biblical World: An Update,
with Special Reference to Baal in the Baal Cycle,” SJOT 12 (1998): 257–313. Summarizing
Smith’s article, Ehrman states, “According to Smith, the methodological problem that
afflicted Frazer [the father of the dying and rising god idea] was that he took data about
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various divine beings, spanning more than a millennium, from a wide range of cultures,
and smashed the data all together into a synthesis that never existed. This would be like
taking views of Jesus from a French monk of the twelfth century, a Calvinist of the
seventeenth century, a Mormon of the late nineteenth century, and a Pentecostal preacher
of today, combining them all together into one overall picture and saying, ‘That’s who

Jesus was understood to be.’ We would never do that with Jesus. Why should we do it
with Osiris, Heracles, or Baal” (Did Jesus Exist?, 229).

[19] “Dying and Rising Gods,” 4:2536.

[20] Dennis Pardee, “The Baʿlu Myth,” in Context of Scripture Volume 1: Canonical

Compositions from the Biblical World [eds. William Hallo and K. Lawson Younger, Jr.;
Leiden: Brill, 2003]: 1.86; John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan
(JSOTSup 265; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 117–18.

[21] Nomes were different territories ruled by different administrators.

[22] M. Heerma van Voss, “Osiris,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (2d.
ed.; Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. vand der Horst; Leiden: Brill, 1999),
650.

[23] Note that the women had already dropped out of the common telling of the gospel in
1 Corinthians 15.
 
For more information, or if you have questions about this resource, you can contact Doug
Becker, Pastor of Theology.

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