Jesus: Just Another Dying-And-Rising Deity?

Jesus: Just Another Dying-and-Rising Deity?

by Catherine Creighton

Introduction

Was Christianity just a first and second-century invention? Was there a “Christ conspiracy,” a “forgery and fraud,” a “rehash of older religions,”1 as D. M. Murdoch claims? Did the early Christians borrow Jesus’ death and resurrection from pagan religions? This idea is not new. One can trace it back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century history of religions school (Religionsgeschichtliche Schule) where it was first popularized by Sir James Frazer’s

1906 work, The Golden Bough. Following in Frazer’s footsteps, Alfred Loisy claimed that Paul saw Jesus as “a savior-god, after the manner of an Osiris, an Attis, a Mithra. Like them, he

[Jesus] belonged by his origin to the celestial world; like them, he had made his appearance on the earth; like them, he had accomplished a work of universal redemption, efficacious and typical; like Adonis, Osiris, and Attis he had died a violent death, and like them he had returned to life.”2

Over time this theory was heavily criticized by reputable scholars and historians and, consequently, fell out of favor. Recently, however, T. N. D. Mettinger has revived it in his work,

The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East (2001).

Skeptics, mythicists and “free thinkers” have followed suit so that books and the Internet have exploded with “parallelomania,” as Samuel Sandmel coined the term.3 Sweeping generalizations are common, like theoretical physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss’s claim that

1 D. M. Murdoch, “The Christ Conspiracy,” Truth Be Known (blog), accessed March 23, 2016, http://www.truthbeknown.com/christ.htm. 2 Alfred Loisy, “Christian Mystery,” Hibbert Journal 10 (1911): 51, quoted in Ronald H. Nash, Christianity and the Hellenistic World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan/Probe, 1984), 170. 3 Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” Journal of Biblical Literature 81 (1962):1-13, accessed March 7, 2016, https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/presidentialaddresses/JBL81_1_1Sandmel1961.pdf. Although Sandmel admits that he was not the first one to use this term, current usage seems to trace back to him.

resurrection is nothing new. In fact, it is “as old as every god and every creation myth.”4

Theologian Robert M. Price maintains that “the figure of the gospels is the literary deposit of a syncretistic concatenation of myths and religious initiation mysteries.”5

But does the evidence support these copycat theories? This paper will reveal what the primary sources actually say, demonstrating that no significant parallels for Jesus’ death and resurrection existed during Christianity’s infancy. But first I will examine some of the problematic methodologies underlying these theories.

Problematic Methodology: Differences

One particular problem with copycat theorists is that they marvel at the alleged similarities while ignoring the striking differences. For instance, there is the difference between cyclical versus linear. The resurrection of Jesus, as well as the final resurrection of believers, is a linear, one-time event. Pagan beliefs about rebirth, however, are cyclical. The mystery religions centered round the vegetation cycles. For the Egyptians, sunrise and sunset were seen as cycles of death and rebirth which were reenacted in the Underworld.

There is also the difference between a mythical distant past and a definitive historical event. As Bruce Metzger explains, “the deities of the Mysteries…were nebulous figures of an imaginary past” whereas “the Divine Being whom the Christian worshipped as Lord was known as a real Person on earth only a short time before the earliest documents of the New Testament were written.”6

4 Lawrence Kraus, “Life, the Universe, and Nothing (III): Is It Reasonable to Believe There Is a God?” Reasonable Faith (debate), August 16, 2013, accessed March 23, 2016, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/life-the-universe-and- nothing-is-it-reasonable-to-believe-there-is-a-go. 5 Robert Price, “The Christ Myth and the Christian Goddess,” r m p (blog), (2009) accessed March 23, 2016 http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/art_christgoddess.htm. 6 Bruce M. Metzger, “Considerations of Methodology in the Study of the Mystery Religions and Early Christianity,” The Harvard Theological Review 48, no. 1 (Jan., 1955): 12. 2

There are also conceptual differences. New Testament scholar N. T. Wright explains that resurrection meant “a new embodied life,” not “a disembodied ‘heavenly’ life,” or “a redescription or redefinition of death. It was death’s reversal.”7 Moreover, Jesus’ death was voluntary, an act of sacrificial love, whereas in the mystery religions the individual died involuntarily as in the murders of Dionysus and Osiris, or in despair, as in Attis’s suicidal self- castration (see below).

But mythicists, like atheist historian Richard Carrier, opine that these differences are

“moot” because pagan gods “nevertheless died and rose back to life.”8 However, this is oversimplifying evidence, which Price admits is “fragmentary and unclear in the extreme,”9 to make it fit the mythicist’s speculations. Thus, for Carrier, pagan myths end up sounding

“sufficiently similar” to Christianity’s “original beliefs,”10 allegedly promoted by the apostle Paul while Jesus’ this-worldly physical resurrection is seen as a later invention.11 But such speculations ignore how a monotheistic Pharisee like Paul would have fiercely resisted polytheistic paganism rather than borrow from it. Moreover, as Wright observes, the type of

“transphysical” body (neither completely immaterial/transfigured, nor completely physical) described in the Gospels regarding the risen Jesus cannot be attributed to a later “Judaizing” embodied version of the story. We “might expect a hellenistic-style ‘spiritualizing’ of the

7 N. T. Wright, “Chapter Two: Shadows, Souls and Where They Go: Life Beyond Death in Ancient Paganism,” in The Resurrection of the Son of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3 (Fortress Press, 2003), under “4. Conclusion: The One-Way Street,” Amazon Kindle edition. 8 Richard Carrier, “Ehrman on Historicity Recap,” FreeThoughtBlogs (blog), July 24, 2012, accessed March 22, 2016, http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1794. 9 Robert Price, “The Christ Myth and the Christian Goddess.” 10 Richard Carrier, “Ehrman on Historicity Recap.” Emphasis in the original. 11 Richard Carrier, “The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb, The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, eds. Robert M. Price and Jeffery Jay Lowder (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005), Amazon Kindle edition. 3

tradition, not a re-Judaizing of it.”12 But even worse, Carrier himself admits that “metaphorical resurrections” of pagan gods “are not quite the same thing as a pre-Christian passion story.” That is, “the Jesus story has more to it” than “an agricultural resurrection theme.”13 So if the Jesus story “has more to it,” then how can it be “sufficiently similar” to sustain causal dependence?

Chronology and Terminology

Clearly differences do, in fact, matter. But there are other methodological problems like the chronological fallacy of drawing on sources for pagan parallels which postdate Christianity’s origins. After all, if Christianity supposedly borrowed from earlier pagan beliefs, then those beliefs need to be demonstrated to have preceded not postdated Christianity’s origins. In fact, not much source material exists for the Hellenistic mysteries until the third century. But reading third century source material back into earlier centuries is bad methodology. The mythicist would argue that such later accounts reflect earlier beliefs. But this ignores how the mysteries evolved over time as well as how many differences existed “between these religions and earlier expressions of such mystery experience (for which adequate information is extremely slim).”14

Another problem in methodology is reading Christian terminology back into pagan myths. As Ronald H. Nash notes, “[i]t is an odd kind of scholarship that first describes a pagan rite in Christian terminology and then marvels at the alleged parallels.”15

Dionysus/Bacchus

Krauss demonstrates this terminology fallacy when he marvels that “Dionysus and Jesus are so close to being identical, they were both born from a virgin mother, they both had a divine

12 N. T. Wright, “Chapter Thirteen: General Issues in the Easter Stories,” in The Resurrection of the Son of God, under “3. The Surprise of the Resurrection Narratives: (iii) The Strange Portrait of Jesus in the Stories.” 13 Richard Carrier, “Kersey Graves and The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors,” The Secular Web (blog), 2003, accessed March 5, 2016, http://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/graves.html. 14 Ronald H. Nash, Christianity and the Hellenistic World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan/Probe, 1984), 128. 15 Ibid., 142. 4

father, they both were resurrected, they both transformed wine into water.”16 But the only legitimate comparison here is the divine father, which is not exactly “earth shattering” considering the divine component of mythologies and the sexual promiscuity among pagan gods.

In fact, both versions of the myth have Zeus impregnating the mother, either the mortal Semele, or his daughter Persephone (or even Persephone’s mother Demeter).17 Hesiod wrote, “Semele, daughter of Cadmus was joined with [Zeus] in love and bare him a splendid son, joyous

Dionysus, – a mortal woman an immortal son. And now they both are gods.”18 Zeus then killed

Semele with his lightning because, according to first century Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, he wanted his baby to be born, “not of a mortal woman but of two immortals, and thus should be immortal from its very birth.”19 So Zeus “found for him another womb wherein to rest, for he hid him in his thigh and fastened it with golden pins to conceal him from Hera.”20 Some see this as a second birth or “rebirth.” However, since all these births, including the aforementioned “rebirth,” were the product of a sexual union, none of them can be considered virgin births.

Regarding Dionysus’s alleged “resurrection,” there are several versions of this myth. In one version, after Dionysus, son of Zeus and Demeter, was torn to pieces by the Titans, Demeter-

Rhea reassembled his limbs and reconstituted him,21 where, according to Diodorus Siculus, “he

16 Lawrence Krauss, “Life, the Universe, and Nothing (III): Is It Reasonable to Believe There Is a God?” I will assume that Krauss meant to say “transformed water into wine” in order to draw a comparison. 17 Diodorus Siculus Library of History 3.64.1-3, in LacusCurtius: Into the Roman World (Loeb Classical Library edition, 1935), accessed March 11, 2016, http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/3E*.html. 18 Hesiod Theogony (ll. 940-942), trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Internet Sacred Text Archive, 1914), http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/theogony.htm. 19 Diodorus Siculus Library of History 5.52.2, trans. C. H. Oldfather, in the Theoi E-texts Library, accessed March 11, 2016,http://www.theoi.com/Text/DiodorusSiculus5B.html#8. 20 Euripides The Bacchantes, in Internet Sacred Text Archive, http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/bacchan.htm. 21 Albert Henrichs, “Dionysus Dismembered and Restored to Life: the Earliest Evidence (OF 59 I-II)” and Paola Corrente, “The Gods who Die and Come Back to Life: the Orphic Dionysus and his Parallels in the Near East (OF 59 I-III and 327 II),” in Tracing Orpheus: Studies of Orphic Fragments, ed. Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui et al., Sozomena: Studies in the Recovery of Ancient Texts (Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), 10:64, 71, accessed March 11, 2016, https://books.google.com/books?id=D4tDMNaqKfIC&printsec=frontcover#v= onepage&q&f=false. 5

experienced a new birth as if for the first time,”22 or “third birth.” However, this is happening in the realm of the gods where, as Albert Henrichs points out, “Greek gods…do not die.”23

Moreover, even Diodorus sees this account as tracing back “to certain causes found in nature” in that “the vine…is restored by the earth to the high level of fruitfulness which it had before.”24

Therefore, this “rebirth” reflects either an Olympian non-physical reconstitution or the vegetation cycle, neither of which interpretation denotes a this-worldly bodily resurrection. Another version portrays Zeus swallowing Dionysus’s heart, the only part not gobbled up by the Titans, and begetting “him afresh by Semele.” In another, the heart is pounded and given “in a potion to

Semele, who thereby conceived him.”25 But this is reincarnation, not resurrection.

Finally, Krauss’s error (“wine into water” instead of “water into wine”) becomes moot because Dionysus’s miracle did not involve transformation from one substance to another.

Rather, as is seen in Euripides’s Bacchae, various liquids, including wine, came forth separately:

…one took her thyrsus and struck it into the earth, and forth there gushed a limpid spring; and another plunged her wand into the lap of earth and there the god sent up a fount of wine; and all who wished for draughts of milk had but to scratch the soil with their finger-tips and there they had it in abundance, while from every ivy-wreathed staff sweet rills of honey trickled.26

Another account, Pausanius’s Description of Greece, is a second century document so that dependence would be difficult to prove. But even granting the skeptic’s counterargument that it represents an earlier belief, the story is not about turning water into wine since the three pots are

22 Diodorus Siculus Library of History 3.62.6, in Lacus Curtius. 23 Albert Henrichs, “Dionysus Dismembered and Restored to Life: the Earliest Evidence,” 65. 24 Diodorus Siculus Library of History 3.62.6-7, in Lacus Curtius. 25 Sir James George Frazer, “XLIII. Dionysus,” in The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1922; Bartleby.com, 2000), accessed March 5, 2016, www.bartleby.com/196. 26 Euripides The Bacchantes. 6

“set down empty” before they are found “filled with wine” the following day.27 In other words, with no water being transformed into wine, there is no parallel with Jesus’ miracle at Cana.

Finally, Achilles Tatius’s novel, The Adventures of Leucippe and Cleitophon, another second century work which postdates the Gospels, portrays Dionysus squeezing the grape directly to produce the wine, saying, “Here is your water…this is its source.”28 Once again there is no water to be miraculously transformed into wine.

So Krauss and others are mistaken in claiming that Jesus parallels Dionysus. The

Dionysus myth contains no virgin birth, no bodily resurrection, and no water turning into wine.

Osiris

Another example of reading Christian terminology back into pagan myths is Carrier’s assertion that “the death and resurrection of Osiris was clearly believed to make it possible for those ritually sharing in that death and resurrection through baptism to have their sins remitted.”29 But do resurrection, baptism, and remission of sins exist in the Osiris myth? The

Isis-Osiris-Horus story can be pieced together from pictorial and textual information in the

Pyramid Texts (Old Kingdom), Coffin Texts (Middle Kingdom), Book of the Dead (New

Kingdom), but more completely in Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris. As a second century source,

Plutarch is admittedly late. But his account seems to agree with earlier sources. At any rate, there are slight variations in the story, but essentially Osiris is son of Geb (earth god) and Nut (sky goddess) and brother to Seth (or Set), Isis, and Nephthys. Seth murders his brother Osiris by trapping him in a coffin, which Seth subsequently throws into the Nile. The Pyramid Texts

27 Pausanias Description of Greece 6.26.1-2, trans. W. H. S. Jones, in the Theoi E-texts Library, accessed March 11, 2016, http://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias6B.html. 28 Achilles Tatius The Adventures of Leucippe and Cleitophon 2.2-3, trans. S. Gaselee, in the Internet Archive (London: William Heinemann, 1917), 61, accessed March 11, 2016, https://archive.org/stream/achillestatiuswi00achiuoft#page/60/mode/2up. 29 Richard Carrier, “Ehrman on Historicity Recap.” 7

mention that Osiris was “drowned.”30 Isis then goes in search of her husband until she finally finds him. The great “Hymn to Osiris” from the Book of the Dead relates that she “shrilled and shrilled at her brother’s bier; Till finally the seed was stirred within the still of heart; She took it to herself,” and conceived Horus.31 Plutarch also describes Isis having “intercourse with Osiris after his death,” conceiving Horus.32 Later Seth discovers the coffin and dismembers Osiris’s body, dividing it into fourteen pieces and scattering them everywhere. Isis searches for the pieces and finds all except the phallus, which had been tossed in the river and eaten by sea creatures.33

Anubis mummifies Osiris, and with the help of Nephthys, Isis, “the woman with magic spells,”34 revives and renews him with magic.35 For mythicists, this is perceived as “resurrection.”

But Osiris never returns to his former life since “after his passion the god becomes ruler, not over the living, but over the dead.”36 He is “king in the realm of the dead,”37 a “dead king recalled in the tomb to a semblance of his former life.”38 In fact, Osiris “is always portrayed in a mummified form,”39 like the relief in the Temple of Seti I at Abydos where Isis is portrayed as a

30 Samuel A. B. Mercer, trans., Pyramid Texts § 615d (October 28, 2010), Amazon Kindle edition. 31 William Mullen, trans., “Hymn to Osiris,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 8, no. 2 (Summer, 1969): 167. 32 Plutarch On Isis and Osiris in Frederick C. Grant, Hellenistic Religions (Indianapolis/New York: The Bobs- Merrill Company, Inc., 1953), 88. 33 Plutarch Isis and Osiris 18, Loeb Classical Library edition, 1936, accessed March 7, 2016, http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Isis_and_Osiris*/A.html. 34 Ernest A. Wallis Budge, “Hymn to Osiris,” in The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Ani (Amazon Kindle, 2009). Amazon Kindle edition. 35 John H. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 23; Pyramid Texts §§ 610c, 616a, 628a, 1122c, 1256-57. 36 John Gresham Machen, “Chapter IV The Religion of the Hellenistic Age,” in The Origin of Paul’s Religion (1921; repr. Project Guttenberg, 2013), Kindle edition, ebook online at www.gutenberg.org. 37 R. O. Faulkner, “Coffin Texts Spell 313,” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 58 (Aug., 1972): 91. 38 Alan H. Gardiner, review of The Golden Bough, by J. G. Frazer, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 2, no. 2 (Apr., 1915): 123. 39 Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History,” Christianity Today, March 15 and 29, 1974, accessed March 7, 2016, http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/yama.html, 2. 8

falcon, hovering over a mummified body of Osiris.40 The Pyramid Texts mention “embalming of

Osiris,” and show him lifting “his arm toward the blessed dead” and “giving judgment.”41

But Carrier insists that a passage exists that proves “Osiris returned to earth in his resurrected body,”42 when he “returns from the dead to tutor Horus.”43 However, even agnostic biblical scholar Bart Ehrman denies this is “a resurrection of his body.” After all, “[his] body is still dead.”44 His soul lives on in the Underworld, but his body is still a mummified corpse and cannot return to this world. In fact, according to Plutarch, Osiris’s body was believed to “have been laid in many different places,” so that many places claimed to have the “true tomb.”45 So if his corpse was still believed to be lying in a tomb, then he could not have been raised bodily.

Therefore, there was no resurrection of Osiris with which to identify in baptism.

Nevertheless, Carrier argues that Lucian Apuleius’s account proves that “baptism” existed in the

Isis cult.46 Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, a second century work, postdates Christianity and, therefore, cannot alone prove causal dependence. Besides, it refers to the Isis, not the Osiris cult.

Moreover, the initiate’s purification is unconnected to the secret rites; and it is unclear what the rites actually symbolize for the initiate, who is described as sensing two emotional and spiritual extremes – approaching Hell and (upon returning) seeing a radiant sun along with “the gods celestiall and gods infernall.”47 Carrier believes this symbolizes death and rebirth. But the

40 G. D. Hornblower, “Osiris and His Rites,” Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 37, no. 186 (October, 1937): 157, accessed March 3, 2016, www.jstor.org/stable/2790925. 41 Pyramid Texts §§ 1122, 26-27. 42 Richard Carrier, “Ehrman on Historicity Recap.” 43 Richard Carrier, “Ehrman on Jesus: A Failure of Facts and Logic,” FreethoughtBlogs (blog), April 19, 2012, accessed March 16, 2016, http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1026#risinggods. 44 Bart Ehrman, “Fuller Reply to Richard Carrier,” The Bart Ehrman Blog (blog), April 25, 2012, accessed March 7, 2015, http://ehrmanblog.org/fuller-reply-to-richard-carrier. 45 Plutarch Isis and Osiris 20, Loeb Classical Library edition. 46 Richard Carrier, “Ehrman on Jesus: A Failure of Facts and Logic.” 47 Apuleius Metamorphosis 11.48, trans. William Adlington, in Internet Sacred Text Archive, accessed March 26, 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ga/ga49.htm. 9

description is, as John Gresham Machen observes, “very obscure.”48 Moreover, evidence for

Egyptian beliefs regarding death and rebirth prior to Christianity show that any reviving was done in the Underworld, and by the sun god, not by Osiris. The Book of the Underworld (New

Kingdom) describes the sun journeying through the Netherworld at sunset, reviving the dead and mummified Osiris, the sun god’s corpse. In “merging with his corpse, [the sun god] was himself rejuvenated, releasing the creative forces necessary for the continuation of life.”49 The ba

(spirit/soul) and mummy of ordinary mortals would likewise be joined and rejuvenated. Once the sun god departed, “the great doors slammed shut; the dead would lament his departure and return to their sleep until the next night.” Thus, the dead experienced a cyclical eternity of death (“inert in their coffins”) and rebirth,50 unlike the Christian belief in eternal life with a glorified body.

What about “remission of sins”? In Egyptian funerary practices the dead had to face judgment before Osiris in the Underworld, as portrayed in the Hunefer Papyrus (c. 1280 B.C.).51

To pass this judgment, the dead would perform a negative confession spell (spell 125), found in the Book of the Dead,52 which enumerated all the sins the dead had not committed. In other words, spells, not forgiveness of sins, allowed the dead to pass judgment.

Therefore, the Osiris cult contained no remission of sins, no resurrection either for Osiris or for his followers, and no ritual which symbolized the latter and accomplished the former.

Mythra, Attis, and Tammuz

Other myths, such as Mythra, Attis or Tammuz (or Dumuzi), fare no better in demonstrating parallels to the Christian beliefs. Mythra, born from a rock, never dies, but is

48 John Gresham Machen, “Chapter VI: The Religion of the Hellenistic Age,” in The Origin of Paul’s Religion. 49 John H. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt, 29. 50 Ibid., 33-34. 51 John H. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt, 36. 52 Ernest A. Wallis Budge, trans., “Negative Confession,” in The Egyptian Book of the Dead. See also, John H. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt, 37, 196. 10

always victorious in battle, and eventually ascends to heaven to be with the gods.53 Therefore, the myth of Mythra contains no virgin birth, no death, and no resurrection. When the shepherd

Attis is driven insane by the goddess Cybele because of his unfaithfulness to her, he castrates himself in despair and dies. Cybele mourns him; then restores him to life. But, as John Gresham

Machen insists, this is not a resurrection. Rather, “all that Cybele is able to obtain is that the body of Attis should be preserved, that his hair should continue to grow, and that his little finger should move.”54 In other versions Attis is turned into an evergreen tree, which is in keeping with the vegetation cycle of mystery religions.55 Moreover, historian Edwin M. Yamauchi states that

Attis does not “appear as a ‘resurrected’ god until after A.D. 150.”56 Therefore, any alleged parallel would be the other way around – Attis followers borrowing from Christianity.

Finally, two versions of the Tammuz (Dumuzi) myth exist: Sumerian (18th century B.C.) and Akkadian (17th century B.C.). Tammuz also later becomes identified with Adonis. But the only four texts mentioning a resurrection for the Adonis myth are late (second to fourth centuries

A.D.). So any influence would have been the other way around.57 At any rate, regarding Tammuz

(Dumuzi), the goddess Inanna/Ishtar “did not save [Dumuzi’s] life, she [gave him over] to the land of no return [as her subst]tute [sic],”58 saying, “‘You for half the year and your sister

[Geštinanna] for half the year…’ Thus holy Inana gave Dumuzid as a substitute.”59 So Dumuzi was stuck in the Underworld half the year for eternity; hardly a resurrection.

53 Franz Cumont, “The Doctrine of the Mithraic Mysteries,” in The Mysteries of Mythra, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Thomas J. McCormack (1903; repr., Internet Sacred Texts Archive, 1903), accessed March 10, 2016, http://www.sacred- texts.com/cla/mom/mom07.htm. 54 John Gresham Machen, “Chapter VI The Religion of the Hellenistic Age,” in The Origin of Paul’s Religion. 55 Ronald H. Nash, Christianity and the Hellenistic World, 140. 56 Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History,” 2. 57 Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Tammuz and the Bible,” Journal of Biblical Literature 84, no. 3 (Sept., 1965): 285, 290. 58 Samuel Noah Kramer, trans., “The Death of Dumuzi: A New Sumerian Version,” in “Special Number in Honour of the Seventieth Birthday of Professor O. R. Gurney,” special issue, Anatolian Studies 30 (1980): 10. 59 J.A. Black, ed., Inana’s Descent to the Nether World, ed. G. Cunningham et al., in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, accessed March 11, 2016, http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr141.htm. 11

But Carrier counters that the goddess Inanna provides “a clear-cut death-and-resurrection tale…she dies and rises in hell, but departs from and returns to the world above all the same.”60

However, Inanna’s “resurrection” is hardly a comparison. For one thing, she is killed as a goddess in the Underworld whereas Jesus was crucified as a God-man in this world. For another,

Jesus willingly died as a substitute for mankind. Inanna, however, was unwilling, selfishly demanding a substitute. Otherwise, she could not have left the Underworld and return to heaven.

As Yamauchi notes, “Inanna, instead of rescuing Tammuz from hell, sent him there.”61

So, contrary to what the copycat theorists would have us believe, there are no death and resurrection accounts in Mythra, Attis, Tammuz (Dumuzi), Inanna, or Adonis that can demonstrate causal dependence for early Christian beliefs.

Conclusion

As has been demonstrated, the copycat theory of pagan dying-and-rising gods influencing

Christianity cannot hold up under scrutiny. In fact, even Mettinger admits that

[t]here is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world. While studied with profit against the background of Jewish resurrection belief, the faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique character in the history of religions.62

In the final analysis, Christianity’s central belief, the resurrection of Jesus, remains a unique historical phenomenon.

60 Richard Carrier, “Ehrman on Jesus: A Failure of Facts and Logic.” 61 Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Tammuz and the Bible,” 290. 62 T. N. D. Mettinger, The Riddle of the Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell International, 2001), 221, quoted in Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A Boyd, The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 2007), Amazon Kindle Edition, 146. 12

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