Dying-and-rising gods were everywhere before Jesus — did Christianity borrow the resurrection, or is that the laziest argument skeptics make?

• RK

  Ravi K.1mo ago

  I was an atheist for 12 years and the dying-rising god argument was one of my favorites. Then I actually went and read the primary sources instead of just Richard Carrier's blog. Osiris is dismembered and reassembled by Isis in the underworld — he doesn't come back to bodily life on earth and talk to people and eat fish. The resurrection accounts are just not the same genre of story. That's when I started taking the Christian claim more seriously, honestly.

  183Reply
• NS

  Nina S.1mo ago

  i grew up in a church that never once engaged with any of this. just 'the bible says it i believe it.' then i got to college and someone brought up osiris and i had literally nothing to say. that almost cost me my faith. i wish someone had taught me this stuff BEFORE i hit the real world. churches are failing their kids by pretending these questions dont exist

  167Reply
• R

  Ravi1mo ago

  I teach ancient Mediterranean religion at a university. Not a Christian, not an atheist, just trying to be accurate: the category of 'dying and rising gods' as a coherent religious pattern was largely dismantled by Jonathan Z. Smith in his 1987 work. Most contemporary scholars of antiquity don't use it anymore. The popular version of this argument is significantly outdated. That doesn't prove the resurrection happened, but it does mean the comparison is far messier than skeptics usually present it.

  156Reply
• E

  Elena1mo ago

  The Mithras comparison alone should embarrass anyone who still trots it out. Mithras wasn't born on December 25th, didn't die, didn't rise. That whole parallel was invented by 19th century comparative religion scholars and just never died. If you're going to challenge Christianity, at least use accurate information.

  147Reply
• F

  Feli1mo ago

  If the resurrection is borrowed from pagan myths, can someone please explain why the Jews — who despised pagan religion and would have recognized the pattern immediately — were the FIRST ones to believe it? The disciples were all Jewish. The earliest church was Jewish. These were people raised to be allergic to exactly the kind of pagan story you're saying they accidentally reproduced. That's always been the thing I can't get past.

  138Reply
• R

  Ravi1mo ago

  Fine, let's say every parallel is wrong. You're still left with a group of first-century Jews proclaiming a resurrection, which is WILD because Jewish theology was deeply uncomfortable with the idea of ONE person being bodily raised before the general resurrection at the end of time. They weren't PRIMED to invent this story. If anything the cultural forces would have pushed AGAINST it. That makes the early testimony more interesting not less.

  134Reply
• RL

  Ravi L.1mo ago

  What bothers me most about the pagan copycat argument is that it cuts both ways and nobody notices. If EVERY ancient culture has a story about death being defeated and life winning — what if that's because it's actually TRUE and human beings have been sensing it all along? You could read the pattern as debunking OR as corroborating. Why does the repeated intuition count as evidence against Christianity specifically?

  121Reply
• L

  Leo1mo ago

  Okay but explain 1 Corinthians 15 to me. Paul is writing within 20 years of the crucifixion — probably earlier given the creed embedded in it — and says Jesus appeared to over 500 people at once, most of whom are still alive. That's a public, verifiable challenge. That's not how myths work. Myths don't come with living witnesses you can go interview.

  119Reply
• F

  Feli1mo ago

  CS Lewis actually addressed this and it's the most honest thing he wrote. He said something like — yes, myths of dying and rising gods exist everywhere, and maybe that means God was preparing the human imagination for the moment it actually happened in history. He called it myth become fact. I've never heard a better answer.

  112Reply
• D

  Diego1mo ago

  Bottom line: the copycat theory had its moment, real historians have mostly moved on, and the internet hasn't caught up yet. That doesn't make Christianity automatically true. But it does mean skeptics need better arguments and believers should stop being terrified of the question. Read N.T. Wright's 'The Resurrection of the Son of God' and then come back and tell me the case is settled either way. It's 800 pages and worth every one.

  109Reply
• Z

  Zara1mo ago

  The laziest version of this argument goes: 'Ancient people had myths. Jesus story sounds like a myth. Therefore Jesus didn't rise.' That's not logic, that's vibes. You have to actually engage the historical evidence — early dating of creedal material, enemy attestation, the empty tomb accounts across multiple independent sources, the transformation of the disciples. Similarities to myths don't explain any of that away.

  102Reply
• O

  Omar1mo ago

  There's a difference between dying for a BELIEF and dying for something you personally WITNESSED. Martyrs for ideology die for what they've been told is true. The disciples were dying for a claim they themselves were either making up or had personally seen. People don't generally die for something they KNOW they fabricated. That's the actual argument. It's not about sincere belief, it's about what they were claiming as direct testimony.

  97Reply
• L

  Leo1mo ago

  This is why apologetics matters and why dismissing it as 'unspiritual' is so dangerous. Faith doesn't require ignorance. The early church FATHERS engaged philosophy and hostile critics head-on. We should too.

  93Reply
• K

  Kofi1mo ago

  Doesn't matter how many parallels are wrong. The burden of proof is still on Christians to show a dead man physically came back to life. You don't get to win by disproving Mithras. You still have to prove YOUR miracle happened.

  89Reply
• D

  Drew1mo ago

  Jesus instituting the Lord's Supper at a PASSOVER meal is deeply Jewish. The background is Exodus not Eleusis. The people who see mystery religion everywhere in early Christianity are doing the opposite of good historiography — they're pattern-matching across wildly different cultural contexts and calling it influence. Show me an actual documented channel of transmission, not just surface similarities.

  88Reply
• MR

  Morgan R.1mo ago

  I will say as someone genuinely on the fence — I find the HISTORICAL case for something happening more compelling than I expected. What I don't know is how to get from 'something unusual happened that people experienced' to 'therefore the specific theology Paul built on it is correct.' That's a bigger leap than apologists usually admit.

  85Reply
• A

  Alex1mo ago

  ^ this. thank you. the internet version of this argument is stuck in 1890. people are citing Frazer's Golden Bough like its cutting edge scholarship when actual classicists moved on generations ago

  78Reply
• RT

  Ravi T.1mo ago

  Hard disagree. 'Just have faith' is not an answer when your college roommate asks you why Christianity is different from every other religion that has a savior story. You owe them a real answer, not a spiritual deflection.

  76Reply
• RT

  Ravi T.1mo ago

  That's honestly the most honest comment on this thread. Lots of people act like proving an empty tomb = proving the entire Nicene Creed. There's a lot of theological construction between point A and point B.

  73Reply
• A

  Avery1mo ago

  ok but even if the SPECIFIC parallels are wrong the broader point still stands right? mystery religions were everywhere in the greco-roman world and early christians were breathing that air. you dont have to have a direct copy to have influence. ideas cross-pollinate. thats just how human culture works

  63Reply
• S

  Sam1mo ago

  Y'all are both missing the point. The issue isn't whether the disciples were sincere. The issue is whether they experienced something real or experienced a group hallucination or a grief-induced vision or a dozen other psychological explanations that don't require a miracle. Sincerity is not evidence.

  61Reply
• D

  Diego1mo ago

  The Dionysus parallel is the strongest one and people keep ignoring it. He was a god who came down in human form, associated with wine (sound familiar?), was killed, and was honored in a communal meal by his followers. If you think the Eucharist has NOTHING to do with mystery religion meal practices you are being intellectually dishonest.

  58Reply
• JL

  Jordan L.1mo ago

  because one of them is making a specific historical claim that can be evaluated. myths are in a different category. when you say 'everyone has this story' and 'this specific guy named jesus rose from the dead on a specific sunday in maybe 30 AD' those are not the same TYPE of claim. that's the whole point

  54Reply
• N

  Nina1mo ago

  people die for false beliefs all the time. that the disciples were willing to die for it doesn't make it true. that argument has never made sense to me

  52Reply
• R

  Riley1mo ago

  Nobody went to interview them though. That's the problem. Paul SAYS you can go check but there's no record anyone did. We're taking Paul's word for a claim about 500 other people.

  47Reply
• S

  Sam1mo ago

  CS Lewis was a literature professor, not a historian. Citing him like he settles a historical question is exactly the problem.

  44Reply
• E

  Elena1mo ago

  Or maybe faith isn't supposed to rest on winning academic debates and the fact that we need a philosophical argument to believe in Jesus says something about the foundation we're building on. Just a thought.

  39Reply
• FR

  Feli R.1mo ago

  My grandma used to say 'before you call someone a thief check if you lost your thing or just forgot where you put it.' I think about that every time someone presents a sloppy argument against Christianity. Get the facts right FIRST then we'll talk. Bad arguments for atheism are just as annoying as bad arguments for religion.

  35Reply

More debates people can't stop arguing about